


What We Fought For

by metisket



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Camorra, Gen, Gomorrah, ethics are the limit of the loser, if you can't beat em, real!mafia AU, tsunayoshi's renaissance, undermine everything they depend on to survive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metisket/pseuds/metisket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The KHR mafia and the real world mafia collide. It’s like a celebrity deathmatch.</p>
<p>
  <i>Tsuna loved Naples from the start. Reborn had trained him to love things that might kill him at any moment, after all.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First posted August 2010.
> 
> Based on the idea that the fallout from the Future Arc caused…well…reality. That the mafia as it really exists is Tsuna’s fault. This was a bad thought, both for Tsuna and for me.
> 
> Most of what I know about crime in Italy I learned from Roberto Saviano, that deranged man. The quotes in italics are all from his book [Gomorrah](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003R4ZGL4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0374165270&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0AAYRWX6PS40G90TKZD8).
> 
> There are reference notes in Chapter 2. I know. You shouldn’t actually _need_ them, though. They are there in case of random curiosity.

_“If you don’t scare anyone, if nobody feels uneasy looking at you, well then, in the end you haven’t really succeeded.”_

* * *

Sawada Tsunayoshi, Tenth boss of the Vongola, is sitting at his desk. He should be working. He knows he should be working, and, moreover, that Reborn is going to catch him in a minute.

Reborn doesn’t kick him in the head anymore, which is strange, because it seems like it would be easier now that Reborn is taller than Tsuna. Tsuna misses the good old head-kicking days. Head-kicking versus paperwork: no contest.

Instead of working, he’s spinning a pencil and bouncing it off his desk. Eraser, point, eraser. Lal Mirch says the Vongola boss shouldn’t be using pencils at all: pens are more dignified. Colonello says she has no sense of humor. Chaos ensues.

In Tsuna’s office, chaos, generally speaking, ensues.

This is the better future, he reminds himself. It’s already been ten years. If they hadn’t changed the future, Byakuran would be running wild by now. Yamamoto’s dad would be dead. The Vongola would be hunted. The Arcobaleno would be dead.

Of course, the Ninth and Gokudera’s father would still be alive.

Eraser, point, eraser, point.

Tsuna is trying to calculate the number of people his guardians have murdered. Just his guardians and immediate circle, leaving aside the Varia as a separate problem. Leaving aside Reborn as utterly beyond Tsuna’s control.

Yamamoto alone has killed a dozen people that Tsuna knows about, and Yamamoto and Gokudera both do their best to hide things like that from him. Mukuro might have been into triple digits before Tsuna ever met him. Chrome herself, not controlled by Mukuro? Five at least. Hibari, unknowable. Ryohei, maybe four. Lambo has killed three people. Tsuna knows this because Lambo still comes to Tsuna to report, proud of his tally. Unlike I-Pin, who probably doesn’t bother to count her dead, and Bianchi and Gokudera, who certainly neither count nor care.

Tsuna knows he’s responsible for every death.

Point, eraser, point.

He considers the fact that he doesn’t know how many people he’s killed himself, and drops the pencil.

* * *

_“Never in the economy of a region has there been such a widespread, crushing presence of criminality as in Campania in the last ten years. Unlike the Sicilian Mafia groups, the Camorra clans don’t need politicians; it’s the politicians who need the System.”_

* * *

The Millefiore left a power gap when Byakuran was excised from time and space, and nature, Gokudera assures Tsuna, abhors a vacuum.

There’s no gap now. The space the Millefiore had shouldered into was filled on the ebb by the ’Ndrangheta, the Sacra Corona Unita, the Basilischi, overseas branches of the triads and the yakuza. And above all, by the Camorra, the clans, the _System_.

The Camorra have a horizontal structure, Gokudera says, instead of a vertical one. A hundred largely independent clans, minimal centralized control. Most of the workers aren’t clan members at all, they’re drones. Gofers who don’t even know which boss they’re working for. Their crime is the crime of having no other options, and Tsuna has all kinds of sympathy for that.

“No respect,” Reborn says, sounding about eighty years old. “No tradition.”

“I think we’re not in Sicily anymore,” Gokudera mutters, mostly to himself.

This is another thing Tsuna hadn’t known until he was forcibly dragged to Italy: Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, is not the scariest of all mafia groups. Almost the opposite, in fact. Everyone watches Cosa Nostra. Everyone knows they exist. People fight them right out in the open.

The better documented a family is, the weaker it is.

The mafia world began to favor looser, more flexible organizations the moment Tsuna defeated the Shimon family—the moment it became clear that there was no weakness there to exploit, that there was nothing to be gained from trying.

In the absence of Byakuran, who was aiming for world domination (which takes a special kind of madness), and with no hope of taking down the Vongola (for now), the other families slowly moved away from special shots, rings, medical experimentation, super-soldiers. At the end of the day, there was very little profit in it, and, more importantly, it was the wrong kind of flashy. Definitively mafia, not to be mistaken for local crime.

Mistake, confusion, and misdirection are the allies of a truly successful family. It’s hard to beat something that defies definition. ( _There is no criminal underworld; it’s your imagination. You’re paranoid. There’s nothing here for you to fight_.)

A quiet, ‘accidental’ fire burned a lab to the ground, and the technology for box weapons was lost before it was found. The boxes became a Vongola secret, never used for their intended purpose, but kept just in case. In case.

If the families didn’t need to protect themselves from the Millefiore, they didn’t need to waste time, money, and anonymity on super-soldiers and flashy weapons. A teenager with an AK-47 or a necklace of grenades would serve just as well. Better.

Old enough to be loyal, too young to have second thoughts.

“Hayato worked for the clans once,” Bianchi mentions off-hand. Gokudera tries to slump himself into invisibility.

“For the Di Lauros, yes?” Reborn says thoughtfully, and Tsuna fights the urge to drag Gokudera out of the room and hide him. “How did that happen?”

Gokudera clearly does not want to answer that question, but he’d never be so rude as to ignore Reborn. He says, “Well.” Hesitates. “I was a kid on my own in Campania. It’s not like I had a ton of options. Besides…”

“If you’re trying to find a way to say ‘Cosimo Di Lauro was hot’ that won’t embarrass you,” Bianchi puts in, “you’re wasting your time.”

“Shut _up_ , Sis—”

“Then you must know a lot about how they work,” Tsuna says hastily. “That could be useful.”

And because they’re now talking business, the embarrassment disappears. This is the serious, calm Gokudera Tsuna first met ten years in the future ten years ago. This is the Right Hand of Vongola X, feared and respected.

No one outside the family is allowed to see that, in fact, he’s still twitchy, hyperactive, geeky, and bad-tempered. He’s learned to disguise his personality incredibly well. He’s learned to be his title.

Maybe they all have.

“I was low-level,” Gokudera says. “I wasn’t around long enough to be trusted with much beyond lookout duty. And then he—Cosimo Di Lauro—was arrested.”

“And then,” Bianchi murmurs, “there was no reason to stick around.”

Gokudera ignores her, in full professional mode now.

“I don’t think it’d help anyway, Tenth,” he says. “The way they work changes with every boss, and the boss might change every few months. Besides, every clan’s got its own boss, and they’re always in and out of feuds with each other. It’s a mess, that’s all you can say for sure. It’s too dangerous even to try to play them off each other; you never know when you’ll wind up involved.”

Tsuna sighs and rubs his temples against the headache that’s always threatening whenever it isn’t actually present, and he tries to think his way around this.

He’s bitterly aware that thinking has never been his strong point.

* * *

_“Hardly any of the younger generation become clan members; they work for the clans without ever becoming Camorristi. The clans don’t want them.”_

* * *

Tsuna went to Naples for the first time when he was eighteen. Until then, he’d been busy making the base in Japan as impenetrable as possible; everyone had agreed that that was wise. Ninth was technically retired, but he agreed to take care of Italy if Tsuna took care of Japan.

By the time Tsuna was eighteen, though, Ninth was dead, and Tsuna had taken over the family in truth. Reborn decided that it was past time for him to see “where the money comes from.” Most of the money, apparently, came from in and around Naples.

Tsuna walked three steps from the train station before entrusting his wallet to Gokudera, getting a death grip on Yamamoto’s arm, and giving himself wholly over to blind panic.

Within two blocks, Gokudera and Bianchi made perfect sense. Beautiful, terrifying women and slouching, wary men were everywhere, pushing past each other, yelling at each other, pointedly ignoring each other. The city itself was clearly insane, every inch of it. The traffic, the architecture, the layout. Pandemonium. Tsuna was so busy staring around open-mouthed that only Yamamoto’s reflexes saved him from death by motorcycle. What in the hell a motorcycle was doing _on the sidewalk_ , Tsuna did not know.

He loved the city from the start. Reborn had trained him to love things that might kill him at any moment, after all.

* * *

“Tomorrow,” Gokudera said once they’d reached their extremely dubious-looking hotel, “we’ll go down to the port.”

“Why, is that the real Naples?” Yamamoto asked cheerfully. Yamamoto was, unsurprisingly, the world’s most easily pleased traveler.

Gokudera glared at him, but didn’t snap back, which was worrying. “It’s _our_ Naples,” he said. “Part of it, anyway.” He took a long drag from his cigarette and stared past the shutters down to the chaotic streets. He said, almost gently, “You’re not gonna like it, Tenth.”

* * *

_“Someone said that living in the south is like living in paradise. All you have to do is stare at the sky and never look down. Ever.”_

* * *

Gokudera was right. Tsuna didn’t like it at all.

“What is this?” Yamamoto asked, staring at the scene with wide eyes.

Gokudera shrugged impatiently. “The heart of the world’s shipping industry. Trash, oil, dead fish, a little water. I think they call it Porto di Napoli, moron. The Port of Naples.”

The confident Gokudera of the last three years had faded with every step they took toward the water, and the Gokudera in front of them now was one Tsuna barely remembered. Twitchy, volatile, miserable in his own skin.

He wondered if Reborn had really known what he was doing to Gokudera, sending him back here. Sending him to walk through his nightmares.

“How do they get those big crates on the ships?” Yamamoto asked blithely.

“Containers. They’re called _containers_ , idiot—and what do you think those cranes are for? They’re not fucking decorative, what’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, so they lift them…hey, can we hang around and watch them load something? That’d be cool!”

“Do you think we’re here for the scenery!?”

Yamamoto’s famed distraction technique. Tsuna knew it well. And the beauty of it was that no matter how often he used it, it always seemed to work.

“Haha! What _are_ we here for?”

“We’re here to _meet_ somebody, I told you a dozen times, you—” Gokudera cut himself off abruptly. “That guy,” he muttered. “We’re meeting that guy.”

A group of men were standing in front of a warehouse talking in low voices. They looked serious and busy. They certainly didn’t look like the sort of people who would work for the mafia, but one of them turned when Gokudera called out. The rest glanced up, noted people approaching, and left, carefully not looking anywhere but the ground. If asked later, Tsuna thought, they could honestly say they hadn’t seen any faces.

“This is Nico,” Gokudera said once they were close enough, gesturing to the man. He was Chinese; Tsuna was pretty sure he hadn’t begun life with the name _Nico_. “Reborn hired him to take care of shipping for us, so he figured you ought to meet him, Tenth. The last guy died.”

Tsuna effortlessly translated “shipping” to mean “smuggling,” and tried not to wonder about the fate of the last guy.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Tsuna said, bowing.

Nico eyed him narrowly, then rattled something off in rapid-fire Italian. Between the Chinese accent and the random scattering of Neapolitan words, all Tsuna managed to pick out was “fucking Japanese boss.”

Gokudera, with a firmer grasp of the language, slammed Nico up against a wall. Yamamoto had no grasp of the language whatsoever, but he’d gathered all he needed to know from body language. He loomed ominously behind Gokudera, a wall of silent support. Smiling that smile.

Yikes, that smile.

Tsuna said, “Calm down, you two.”

Nico had said bad things about Japanese people while on his own and in the presence of three of them. Three of them, heavily armed. Either he had a debilitatingly serious problem with Japan, or else he was completely insane. Whichever one it was, slamming him into walls wasn’t going to help.

“Why don’t you want a Japanese boss?” Tsuna asked once Gokudera had stepped fractionally back from Nico. He tried to sound calm. Sometimes Gokudera could be coaxed into calmness, if you surrounded him with enough of it.

“A Japanese man killed my father,” Nico hissed, easy enough to understand once he slowed down. For better or worse.

Gokudera snorted. “Yeah, right. An Italian guy killed _my_ father. What’s your point?”

Tsuna frowned. It wasn’t like Gokudera to mention his father’s death. Moreover, that was clearly not the whole story on Nico’s problem with Japan, and it was unlike Gokudera not to pick up on that. It was just a hint. It did give Tsuna a place to start, though, which was all he needed. He was used to dealing with people in a towering rage who didn’t believe he was capable of anything.

He mentally scheduled time to worry about Gokudera once this was over.

“The Vongola didn’t kill your father,” Tsuna said, reasonably confident that it was true. “And I’m Vongola before I am anything else.”

Nico narrowed his eyes. Tsuna couldn’t tell if he was suspicious of Tsuna’s sincerity, or if he just couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was admittedly a pretty terrible thing to say, and Tsuna was silently, frantically apologizing to he-knew-not-what, his non-mafia ancestors or the spirit of Japan or something. But it was true.

“We’re all foreign in this country,” Tsuna pointed out. “It’s a chance to start over, in a way. But if you don’t want to work with us, you don’t have to. We won’t hold it against you.”

“Tenth!” Gokudera gasped, scandalized.

“You’d replace me?” Nico asked with the contempt of an expert for amateurs.

“We’d have to replace you with someone who doesn’t know the business as well,” Tsuna said, and it was probably true. Reborn liked to hire the best. “But if you don’t want to work for me, then I’ve lost you already. Haven’t I?”

Nico studied Tsuna’s face. “Funny boss.”

“It’s a one-time offer,” Tsuna said. “If you stay with us, you’re _ours_.”

“They said you were soft. I thought they lied. They never said you were Japanese.” Nico sank into thought, scowling at everyone’s shoes, for a very long time. Gokudera fidgeted impatiently until Yamamoto subtly elbowed him, at which point he switched to baring his teeth at Yamamoto. Who smiled back.

“Fine,” Nico announced at last, sounding anything but happy about it. “Fine, I’ll take it. You’ll die in a month anyway, so what do I care? I’m your man for as long as you live. My Japanese boss.”

Tsuna smiled, and spoke over Gokudera’s growl. “Well, that seems fair.”

* * *

_“He talked about Cosa Nostra as if it were an organization enslaved to politicians and, unlike the Caserta Camorristi, incapable of thinking in business terms. … Businessmen. That’s how the Caserta Camorristi define themselves, nothing more than businessmen.”_

* * *

Gokudera took them back to the hotel, apparently determined to keep work-related activities down to one a day. (Tsuna was really, really starting to worry.) It was a quiet afternoon, comfortably centered around food.

The next day, though, it started again. Lessons on where the money came from.

They drove north in a Mercedes that Gokudera had somehow managed to acquire. They went to a place called Sant’ Antimo.

“We’re just taking a look, boss,” Gokudera said several times. “We’re not talking to anybody. Just in and out.”

In and out. Like a hit, Tsuna thought, then silently cursed Reborn for ruining his mind.

They arrived, stepping out of the car and leaning against it, all in a row. Looking up at the factory.

Tsuna wondered why he was so horrified. Maybe it was because Sant’ Antimo wasn’t ugly, and he’d expected that it would be. No, in places it was incredibly beautiful. Not an ugly town, but a broken one. And nowhere was it more obvious than at the factory.

He wondered if some of the factories belonged to the Vongola. Because if they did, then he was responsible.

“Do we own any of these factories?” Yamamoto asked obligingly.

“No,” Gokudera snapped. “They’re mostly privately owned, but I think the clans own a few. The clans own a few of fucking everything. Right, this is pretty complex, so I’m gonna explain it really, really slowly. Pay attention.” A nervous—nervous?—glance toward Tsuna. “Sorry if you get bored, Tenth.”

_Bored?_

“The way it works is, the label—the brand, right? Valentino, Versace, Armani, whoever—they have meetings with a bunch of the factory owners. The label announces a number of pieces and a date it needs them done by. Any factories that think they can do it shout out, and the label gives material to all of them. The factory that gets it done first gets paid, the rest get to keep the material.

“The thing is, the factories need loans to do the work because they don’t get paid until after the label accepts the finished pieces—you following this? But no bank’s gonna give a loan when the odds are so stacked against them getting paid back. So we give the loans. The factory that gets paid, they pay us back. The rest of them have designer-quality clothes they can’t do anything with, so we sell the stuff for them. Nico ships it all over the world. The label doesn’t care because the clothes _are_ designer quality, so it doesn’t make them look bad—it gets their name out there for cheap. Knockoff but not. The Italian fashion industry wouldn’t exist anymore without us. And not just the fashion industry.”

“Um,” Yamamoto said after a moment, sounding a little dazed. “Whoa.”

Tsuna couldn’t have put it better himself.

Gokudera tapped a cigarette out of the box, turned it over a few times, flicked his lighter on and off. “We’re not the bad guys here, Tenth.”

They definitely weren’t the only bad guys. Tsuna didn’t much like being a symptom of the disease, though.

“Reborn says the families involved in the drug trade are the bad guys,” Tsuna murmured. He said it so often, in fact, that Tsuna had been finding it hard to believe even before this trip.

Gokudera fiddled with his lighter until he nearly dropped it, then abruptly stuffed it back into his pocket. He had the slightly feral look he always wore when he was about to disagree with someone he considered a superior. “The thing about drug trafficking,” he said, “is that it doesn’t affect everybody, not really. Not like clothes, construction, real estate. Trash.”

“Trash?”

“We don’t have anything to do with it, Tenth.” Fiercely, savagely. This was clearly personal for Gokudera—but then, everything in this part of the world seemed to be.

“How do you make money from trash?”

Gokudera shook his head. “Just, it’s expensive to get rid of, right? The toxic stuff, especially. Or at least it’s expensive if you do it right. If you get paid to dispose of it and instead dump it in the nearest river, that’s pure profit.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Reborn…never told you about the trash thing in 2008, right? You’ll have to ask him when we get home.”

Reborn, it turned out, had never told Tsuna about a lot of things.

“That’s enough for today,” Gokudera said, clearly exhausted. “I don’t want you to get worn out, Tenth. Let’s eat something.”

“We’re not talking to the factory owner?” Tsuna asked.

Gokudera shook his head, meeting no one’s eyes. “Nah. They’re busy, Tenth.”

Busy. Tsuna wondered how many hours these people worked every day.

“Where are we going tomorrow?” Yamamoto asked once they were back in the car. A grim question, very different from his earlier tourist’s optimism.

“Nowhere.” Gokudera shrugged. “I thought we’d take a day off. Day after, we’ll go see Chiavarone. That’ll be so annoying, Tenth’ll need a day to brace himself for it.”

Silence all the way back to Naples, which was as strange for Yamamoto as it was for Gokudera. And Tsuna couldn’t come up with anything to say. He wished he could stop thinking about that town. Sant’ Antimo. It had looked like it was drowning. To hear Gokudera tell it, all the towns north and east of Naples were that way.

They made it back to the hotel. Gokudera parked the car in a very strange spot that Tsuna doubted was strictly legal, and then they walked, on a quest for dinner.

“What are we going to eat?” Tsuna asked, because at least it was something to talk about. Something to get that look off of Gokudera’s face.

“Real Italian pizza?” Yamamoto suggested brightly, gratefully running with it.

“We had real Italian pizza yesterday,” Gokudera snapped. Tsuna and Yamamoto both smiled at him, which annoyed him more. “Today we’re eating _meat_.”

“Real Italian pasta?” Yamamoto tried.

“If we’re having it as the course before the meat, sure.”

“How about seafood? We’re right next to the water.”

“If you like radioactive fish, then—”

“Hayato Gokudera,” a woman’s stunned voice cut in.

They turned to the speaker; middle-aged, thin, tired, and crossing herself with a horrified expression. A glance at Gokudera’s face showed that all the good work Tsuna and Yamamoto had done was now undone, and Tsuna felt a wave of annoyance. Did this woman really need to show up right now? Really?

“Gia,” Gokudera said blankly.

“You left,” she said, somewhere between disappointed and enraged. “You _left_ , why are you here? Why would you come _back?_ ”

“I’m not back,” he told her, obviously meaning it as a comfort. “I’m showing these two where I grew up, that’s all. Then we’re going back to Japan. I’m going back to Japan, Gia. I won’t stay.”

“You want people to know where you grew up?” She gave a bitter laugh and cast suspicious eyes over Tsuna and Yamamoto. “‘Friends.’ Your poor mother must be turning in her grave. Show me your arms.”

Gokudera rolled his eyes and sighed, but obediently rolled up his sleeves. “Look, Ma,” he muttered. “No tracks.”

One of those little Gokudera statements that got more horrifying the longer you thought about it.

Tsuna watched Gia scowl, and firmly reminded himself that killing civilians was the sort of thing he was opposed to on principle. He put a restraining hand on Yamamoto’s arm to remind him, too.

Gia folded her arms and started drumming her fingers. She studied all three of them in turn, taking her time about it. Tsuna wished she would stop with the drumming.

“You’re too skinny,” she finally told Gokudera, sounding pissed off about it. “You’re always too skinny. Do you even know how to cook for yourself?”

“You refused to teach me to cook, Gia,” Gokudera snapped, wrapping his arms around his stomach, defensive. “Maybe that’s why I’m skinny.”

“You break plates just by looking at them; I didn’t want you anywhere near a stove. It’s only thanks to the Holy Mother that you haven’t blown yourself up! Come to dinner, you’re so skinny it hurts me to look at you.”

“I can’t—”

“Bring your ‘friends.’ It was Nino’s first communion today, so everyone will be there. Hayato, you haven’t seen Maria since she was a girl, you haven’t met her husband, you haven’t written a single letter to poor Don Luigi after all he did for—”

“Fine, God!” Gokudera shouted, then realized what he’d done, and turned to Tsuna in sudden panic. “I mean, unless—”

“It sounds fun.” Tsuna smiled, trying to ignore Gia’s savage glare.

This was how they found themselves, ten minutes later, sitting at a dining room table being largely ignored as Gia prepared dinner with more crashing and banging than seemed really necessary.

Tsuna turned worried eyes to Gokudera. “I didn’t know you still had friends here,” he said. “She doesn’t seem glad you’re back?”

Gokudera sighed, absently smoothing the tablecloth.

“Gia’s husband was shot by the Casalesi,” he explained in a reluctant undertone. “Some fucking _pentito_ said he was a traitor, and the Casalesi got to him before the carabinieri or the police could. She’s never…if she could get out of here, she would. And she’d never come back. She doesn’t understand what I’m doing.”

Tsuna thought that Gokudera wouldn’t have come back here either, if he’d felt he had a choice.

“Was her husband really…working against the Casalesi?” Tsuna asked, equally quietly, trying to understand.

“He was shot for being a traitor.”

“But was it true?”

“It doesn’t…it doesn’t _matter_ , Tenth. What, you…? He owned a grocery store, he had a wife and three daughters, he’s dead. That’s the truth. Someone betrayed the Casalesi, somebody said Rico did it, they executed him for it. He might as well have done it. It’s true now. It’s true enough. If you betray the clans, you get shot fifty times and they put you in a car and burn it. It’s true.”

Tsuna nodded, though he didn’t understand. He gazed out the window, studied the trash piled along the side of the road, and didn’t look at Gokudera because he didn’t think Gokudera could handle it right now. Tsuna was a mafia boss. He was not allowed to cry no matter how upset his right hand was. “I’m sorry.”

Gokudera laughed a little, desperately, breathlessly. “Okay, Boss,” he said. “Okay.”

“Hayato!” Gia shouted from the kitchen. “I need onions!”

“All right, I’m going!” Gokudera shouted back, then scowled at Yamamoto and switched to Japanese. “Look after the Tenth while I’m gone.”

Yamamoto smiled. “You got it,” he said. He and Tsuna watched Gokudera duck out the door.

“So,” Yamamoto said. “What’s going on?”

Gokudera had at no point paused to translate anything for Yamamoto, and Tsuna had been too unclear on everything to try. A bad sign: under normal circumstances, Gokudera made sure that Yamamoto knew what was going on.

Tsuna really didn’t understand how it was that Reborn let Yamamoto get away with not speaking any Italian _at all_.

“The lady who’s making us dinner,” Tsuna said. “Gia-san. She and her family knew Gokudera before. She’s worried about why he’s here. In Naples, I mean.” It was absolutely true and yet somehow managed to completely miss the point. “I’ll tell you later.”

Yamamoto frowned: another bad sign.

Dinner should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. People wandered in and out—relatives, friends, or neighbors, Tsuna was never clear. Children ran though the house; presumably one of them was Nino. Haphazard introductions were made. Everyone was perfectly polite and they were given more food than they knew how to handle, but it was clear that Tsuna and Yamamoto weren’t considered part of this family chaos. Gokudera was. Tsuna watched in some amazement as Gokudera was pulled into the rhythm of it, pulled in like he’d never been gone—shouting at the daughters, herding children, carrying things for Gia, arguing with the men about soccer teams, everyone talking at once. Tsuna would never in a million years have guessed that Gokudera followed soccer.

“He’s like a different person,” Yamamoto murmured. But he wasn’t, not really. Not when Tsuna thought about the way he was with the family—always pushing at Yamamoto, always looking to Tsuna for guidance, always bullying everyone else. Maybe this was what he wanted. To be pushed back. To be shoved and bullied and held, to be reminded every day where his place was. To be reminded that he had a place. Maybe they’d been letting him down all along.

Gia grabbed Tsuna by the back of the neck in passing with the hand that wasn’t holding a heaping bowl of mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. “Take good care of Hayato,” she hissed into his ear, making him shiver. “Or I’ll kill you.”

She walked on. Tsuna thought that if he survived the evening, every question he’d ever had about Gokudera would be answered. He also thought that Gia and Bianchi were probably really good friends. Or else deadly enemies.

“Do you miss them?” Tsuna asked quietly later on, when Gokudera had pried himself momentarily away from the soccer debates. He asked in Japanese, for Yamamoto’s benefit and for privacy.

“Miss them? No. Yes.” He stopped and made an effort to organize his thoughts. “I hated it here,” he explained at last, unusually quiet. “These guys…I mean, I like them. I guess I do miss them, but not enough to stay here. They wouldn’t want me to stay, anyway.”

“They’re a nice family.”

“But they’re not _my_ family, Tenth.” He seemed bewildered as to why this had come up. “They don’t mind having me around, but I’m not their problem. They have their own problems.”

Tsuna smiled. They weren’t letting Gokudera down after all. “Good,” he said. “You’re our family.”

“Haha, you’re our problem,” Yamamoto threw in, and then, “ _Ow_ ,” when Gokudera kicked him savagely under the table.

They escaped at long last—many good wishes, and the occasional veiled threat aimed at Tsuna when Gokudera was preoccupied. Tsuna thought Gokudera underestimated how much they considered him their problem. But that was okay. He had his own family now, and they wouldn’t let him forget it.

Gokudera brought the car and Yamamoto offered to drive. This kicked off a screaming argument that carried them all the way back to the hotel.

Yamamoto’s famed distraction technique.

* * *

_“If they kill you delicately, a single shot to the head or stomach, it is interpreted as a necessary operation, a surgical strike, no malice. Unloading more than two hundred shots into your car and more than forty into your body, on the other hand, is an absolute method of erasing you from the face of the planet.”_

* * *

If Tsuna is good at nothing else, he’s good at adapting.

Within a few weeks, everything about Naples seemed normal: ubiquitous mosquitoes, random trash, stray dogs basking in piazzas, nothing ever being on time, trains going on strike every few weeks. Motorcycles or at least mopeds feeling free to drive down the sidewalk.

As far as Tsuna could tell, in Japan, people tended to feel responsible for everything, but in Italy, people tended to feel that everything was out of their control. Maybe he should have been born in Italy.

No, he didn’t have trouble adapting to the country. What he failed to adapt to was the same thing he’d been failing to adapt to for years: his job. A shame, because he could theoretically hide in Japan forever, but he’d learned the hard way that he was never going to escape the mafia. So he had to keep trying. He had to understand.

“How does Dino make money?”

“Extortion, mostly,” Gokudera said with a shrug. “It’s so old-school, it’s kind of embarrassing. You’d think _one_ of his men would have a head for business.”

“Extortion?” Tsuna repeated in a voice weak with horror.

“It’s not enough, either; his family’s constantly broke. Which is why he does favors. If you think about it, _everybody_ owes Chiavarone. If he’s in serious trouble, he can call in debts from half the families in the south.”

“Favors?” Tsuna asked. “What kind of favors?”

“Hits,” Gokudera answered. “Guard duty. Helping train Vongola X’s guardians. He doesn’t seem picky.”

Tsuna suspected that sometimes he had trouble understanding things because, deep down, he still didn’t want to. “Extortion?”

“Yeah, if you can call it that. People have to pay, but they’re happy to do it. You know how Chiavarone gets when somebody does something to his people, Tenth.”

Tsuna knew. “What does he do when people won’t pay?”

Gokudera shrugged again. “People pay.”

…Right.

This had come up because they were visiting Dino again today, and in Tsuna’s new state of money-consciousness, it had occurred to him that he’d never even wondered how Dino made a living. And now he knew, and he was going to have to look Dino in the eye and not think things like _mafia whore_.

This was why questions were a bad idea.

“I’ll stay with you, Tenth,” Gokudera said diffidently. As if he hadn’t asked to stay fifteen times already.

“But you’re going to Franco’s today,” Tsuna said patiently. For the sixteenth time.

“Then I’ll leave the baseball idiot with you.”

“Gokudera, I’m going to be in a room with an ally and a bunch of his men. You’re going to be wandering around the city all alone. I’d feel a lot better if you took Yamamoto with you.”

“I won’t be wandering the city! I’m only going to a bar, I’ll be safe, you don’t have to worry—you’re going to be in _Secondigliano_. I used to live in Secondigliano, Tenth, they call it Terzo Mondo for a reason!”

“Terzo Mondo?” Yamamoto asked.

“It means Third World. If you’d ever learned any fucking Italian, baseball freak.”

“Please, Gokudera,” Tsuna said.

He shifted and lit a cigarette, visibly unhappy. “You’ll wait inside until we pick you up?”

“Of course,” Tsuna said without any serious intention of following through.

* * *

_“Around here keeping your mouth shut is not the simple, silent_ omertà _of lowered hats and eyes. Here the prevailing attitude is ‘It’s not my problem.’”_

* * *

If Sant’ Antimo was drowning, then Secondigliano had drowned years ago. After being smashed with hammers.

Gokudera had lived here, once upon a time.

Dino didn’t seem bothered by it at all. It was amazing what people could come to see as normal. Tsuna worried that in a few years, he wouldn’t see anything especially horrible about this town either.

Dino introduced him to people. Or to people’s pictures, anyway. So-and-so, boss of such-and-such, territory here. Drugs, arms, construction, organs, trash, milk, coffee. Ally, neutral, enemy.

This went on for almost an hour. Tsuna knew Dino was doing it on Reborn’s orders, but did he seriously think Tsuna was going to remember all this? The faces flowed past in an undifferentiated stream of exotic names and horrible crimes. Tsuna didn’t have a hope of keeping them straight.

As if reading his mind, Dino clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, little brother,” he said confidently.

Tsuna gave him a sickly smile.

“It’s late enough for the drug market,” Dino said, checking the clock. “That’s why I had you meet me here. It’s not something we’re into, but you should see it in action, Tsuna. This is how a lot of people get rich, so it’s good to know something about the process.” He turned to look at Romario, who gazed impassively back. Dino appeared to take courage from this. “But whatever you do, don’t tell Gokudera I took you. He’ll _kill_ me.”

* * *

Tsuna was waiting next to someone’s motorcycle, which was parked illegally halfway onto the sidewalk. He noted this only out of absent habit; it was pretty much the least illegal thing he’d seen today, after all. The bike was a Honda, and enough like the model he’d learned to ride to stir up good memories. It was comforting. He needed comfort.

Open air drug markets. Just like any other market, really; more efficient than most. Tidy, quick, careful. Dino explained the origins and journeys of various drugs as they walked around the edges. Imported from here, cut there, tested on these guys no one would miss if they died, distributed another place. Profit, profit, profit. Dino said the Secondigliano clans were better at this business than anyone else.

Tsuna had never actually seen a person shooting up before; another new experience. He’d learned all kinds of things today.

Five minutes before the police showed up, the whole market vanished as if it had never existed. _Police_. No wonder Dino didn’t want Gokudera to know where they’d been.

Gokudera, God. Gokudera, who used to _live here_. It was like he was trying to worry Tsuna on purpose. Dino had let Tsuna escape half an hour earlier than planned, and Tsuna had blithely sent him away, because under normal circumstances, Gokudera would have been waiting at least half an hour before the meeting was scheduled to end. Not this time. It was now fifteen minutes before time, and he still wasn’t here.

Tsuna noticed that he was staring at the motorcycle in a way that might seem kind of suspicious, and forced himself to stop.

Yamamoto was there to take care of Gokudera. Tsuna needed to calm down. He needed to learn to let go sometimes and not get frantic over every little thing. Even though fifteen minutes seemed like an awfully long time when he’d sent Dino away and had no way to get anywhere and had left his phone at the hotel like an idiot and Gokudera had never been anything less than twenty minutes early before. What was happening at Franco’s? Nothing was supposed to happen. They were only supposed to be checking if the Varia had left any messages.

Tsuna stared at the motorcycle.

_Am I really_ , he thought, _going to hotwire a motorcycle in some kind of fit of overprotective panic?_

* * *

“Oh my God, Tsuna,” Yamamoto said. “Did you steal that motorcycle?”

“Um.”

“Tenth! You were riding without a helmet!? That’s so dangerous! Please be more careful, what would have happened if you’d gotten into an accident, how would we even have known!?”

Gokudera rode without a helmet all the time, but Tsuna knew that argument would get him nowhere. And Gokudera was evidently fine. Which meant that Tsuna had stolen someone’s motorcycle and driven it from Secondigliano to Naples for no reason at all.

“We’re _late_ ,” Gokudera realized, seizing Yamamoto’s arm to check his watch, horror-struck. “We abandoned our boss with that moron Chiavarone, that’s why this happened! What if you’d died in traffic? It would’ve been all my fault, I might as well’ve run you over _myself_ —”

“Gokudera, really—”

“Oh my God, Tsuna, you _stole a motorcycle_.” Yamamoto was gazing at him with something disturbingly like reverence.

“Ah, Spanner taught me how. I guess I can take it back?” Tsuna suggested. Not that hotwired vehicles were ever exactly the same afterward… “As long as you guys are okay, I mean. I don’t need it. Or I didn’t need it, but I thought I did—” God, he needed to _stop talking_ , was what he needed—“so anyway I’ll take it back if you come with me.”

“I’m _so sorry_ , Tenth!”

“He got into a fight,” Yamamoto said with the brittle cheer that Tsuna had been able to see through for years. Something about this fight had really upset Yamamoto. And it had upset Gokudera enough to make him _late_.

“A fight?” Tsuna frowned. “Mafia?”

“Not…really. Sort of. Please don’t worry about it, Tenth,” Gokudera said.

Tsuna frowned harder.

“There,” Yamamoto said, still not sounding quite himself. “That guy.”

That guy. He could have been Gokudera’s thinner, angrier brother. He’d obviously come out very much the loser in the fight, but it didn’t look like that was going to stop him from trying again.

Tsuna rubbed fitfully at his eyes and wondered how it was that he could trust all of his guardians to take care of him, but none of them to take care of themselves. “You know him, Gokudera?”

“I…yes.”

“You don’t _know_ me,” the stranger said.

“Fuck you, Luca.”

“So this is your boss.” Luca sneered. “Looks like you do have a sweet deal, just like you said. But he’s gonna figure out what you are sooner or later, and then what’ll happen to you, huh? Then what?”

It was unfair. All those years Gokudera had been so quiet about his life before he’d met them, and now it was being kicked out onto the ground in the most painful possible way. Reborn had to have _known_ —

Gokudera laughed. Not a bitter laugh, but as if he’d really found something funny. Tsuna turned, surprised, and found Gokudera smiling at him.

“My boss sees right through me,” Gokudera said, more settled than he’d been since they landed in Naples. “The weird thing is, he seems to like what he sees.” He turned back to Luca, and the smile dropped from his face. “Fuck off and die, Luca. I don’t live here anymore.”

“Come on, Gokudera,” Tsuna said firmly. “Let’s go.”

They went, variously in cars and borrowed motorcycles. Luca stared after them with bared teeth and clenched fists, shouting things that Tsuna deliberately chose not to translate. It was just lucky that Gokudera hadn’t made him mad enough to shoot at them in broad daylight. Tsuna had really hoped they were done making enemies. He prayed Luca wasn’t connected to anyone who might try to kill them later.

And he had no idea why Yamamoto was smiling so much. He hoped it wasn’t about the whole motorcycle thing.

* * *

_“Women are better able to confront crime as if it were only momentary, or someone’s opinion, or a step one takes before quickly moving on. Clan women demonstrate this very clearly. They feel offended and vilified when they are called Camorristi or criminals, as if ‘criminal’ were merely a judgment of an action, not an objective way of behaving. In fact, contrary to the men, so far not one female Camorra boss has ever repented. Not one.”_

* * *

Tsuna was walking along a street in Ercolano. Not a long walk; just from the ruins of Herculaneum to the train station. He was enjoying himself. He’d been pretending to be a tourist with all his might for the last week, and had momentarily managed to push out of mind the purpose of the trip, his title, his real life.

Kyoko, Haru, and Lambo were visiting for the last month before everyone headed back to Japan. Just having them around lowered the stress level. He and Gokudera and Yamamoto alone, Tsuna thought, had a tendency to get too intense for anyone’s good.

Today Haru had declared that she was off to “discover my future husband’s culture!” and she’d dragged Lambo with her, so Kyoko was the only one who went along on the Ercolano trip.

Despite the fact that Kyoko was telling him everything Bianchi had taught her about the Nuvoletta family’s relationship to Cosa Nostra, the walk was peaceful. Ridiculously hot, of course, but you couldn’t have everything. It was so peaceful that Gokudera and Yamamoto had allowed them to get about a block ahead, which was practically unheard of, when the car pulled up next to them and opened fire.

Tsuna had been shot at so often, and by such a variety of weapons, that the wall of flame was a reflexive response, the popping popcorn sound of bullets exploding familiar. And because Kyoko was with him, because Gokudera and Yamamoto were with him, because these people had _endangered his family_ , he let the flame chase the gunfire back to its source.

Everyone he’d ever fought would have deflected the flame, but everyone he’d ever fought had been part of a different world. A world in which strength had been prized over profit. He’d destroyed that world with his own hands.

This was the world he’d made, and in this world, he burned the car down to the frame between one heartbeat and the next.

It was only later (too late) that he remembered it was an unusually dry August, and unless he wanted half the town to burn, he needed to get rid of the fire. So he froze it.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then Gokudera was on the phone shrieking at someone in Italian, and Yamamoto was helping Kyoko up (she’d hit the ground at the first shot) and hustling her and Tsuna to cover, trying to be a human shield.

Tsuna knew he wouldn’t see any rational behavior from Gokudera or Yamamoto anytime soon. They never took well to people being so much as rude to Tsuna, and an assassination attempt was a whole different level of upsetting. As far as Tsuna could tell, the protectiveness wasn’t because they didn’t think he could take care of himself. Obviously, they knew better. It was because the very idea offended them.

Tsuna tried to look very healthy and uninjured for their benefit, and not like someone having a meltdown over accidentally burning an unknown number of people to death. Even though he was having a meltdown. Quietly.

“Tsu-kun.” Kyoko’s voice cut into his thoughts, mildly disapproving. “You shouldn’t have frozen the car.”

She was right. If he hadn’t frozen it, it would have been just another burned out car in Campania. Just another burned out car full of bodies—anyone might have done it. Tsuna had gone and made it _memorable_.

“We’ll think of something,” Kyoko said, patting his hand. “But next time, be more careful.”

There was a time, Tsuna thought, when she would have been more upset by this than he was. That time was apparently past.

Well, she had seen him kill people before. It was just that this time, it had been an accident. This time, he’d terrified himself doing it.

* * *

_“Two shots in the nape of her neck: that was how the old-fashioned taboo of not touching women was breached. A skull shattered by bullets, facedown in a puddle of blood—this was the new direction of the Camorra. No difference between men and women. No supposed code of honor.”_

* * *

Gokudera called the Varia, then he called Ryouhei to control the Varia, then he called Dino to question the families allied to Chiavarone. He even tried to call Hibari, but Hibari had changed his number. This caused Gokudera to have what Tsuna generously chose not to think of as a tantrum, even if that was what it most closely resembled.

Tsuna had Hibari’s new number, actually. In the interests of not being bitten to death, though, he thought he’d better keep it to himself. Hibari wouldn’t be interested in this kind of work.

By mid-week, Gokudera’s frantic investigation had turned up the Birra family as the culprits. It was surprising only because it was so obvious—the Birra family had been in Ercolano forever. Strange that they would attack another boss so blatantly in their own territory, even if that boss did have a reputation for being weak, soft, easy.

The lack of calculation was its own punishment. By the end of the week, there had been a coup. The boss who’d ordered the hit on Tsuna had been killed by his own people, along with ten of his most faithful. The clan was under completely new leadership.

This didn’t stop the Varia from killing a dozen more of them out of sheer momentum. Ryouhei was just proud he’d kept them from wiping out everyone. (Gokudera was neutral on the subject.)

Tsuna heard all of this, and he knew he was going to have a reaction to it. Later. He was still in something like shock. He couldn’t tell what he was going to feel when he got around to feeling things, and it was starting to scare him.

Everyone but the Varia and Ryouhei flew back to Japan the next week, as scheduled. Kyoko, Haru, and Lambo split off at the airport, to go to their homes or to Tsuna’s home, depending. Tsuna, Gokudera, and Yamamoto headed to the base, where Reborn was waiting.

Tsuna wasn’t sure of his feelings right up until he saw Reborn’s face, at which point they became blindingly clear. Count on Reborn to help him figure things out.

He was angry, it turned out. Extremely angry. Dizzy with rage, even. It wasn’t his normal way of dealing with things. He felt completely out of control; he felt like crying, like screaming, like smashing things to pieces.

Reborn said, “I hear you had trouble.”

Tsuna said, “You never told me.”

“You could have handled that with more grace, Tsuna. You’re too old to be panicking and burning everything in sight.”

“ _You didn’t tell me_.”

“Gokudera and I,” Yamamoto cut in, “are going to go check in! With, uh.”

“Giannini?” Gokudera suggested, probably at random.

“Yeah! Giannini! He might have a new…something…so we’ll see you later!”

And with that, they disappeared. You didn’t survive being a Vongola Guardian without being able to tell which way the wind was blowing.

“You said you would fight to protect your family,” Reborn said once they were out of earshot. “It’s too late to change your mind now.”

Under normal circumstances, the guilt tactic would have worked. At the moment, though, Tsuna was in no mood to be played with. “That’s not what we’re talking about,” he said, calm in his rage. Too calm. Almost as calm as a man who knows he’s about to die. “Right now we’re talking about whether or not I can trust you, Reborn. You never told me.”

“I told you the mafia world was cruel. I told you it wasn’t fair.”

“You let me believe I could protect my family without hurting innocent people.”

“You were determined to believe it. I couldn’t tell you otherwise; I had to prove it. Why do you think I sent Gokudera with you?”

Tsuna’s eyes flared wide, and his vision went red around the edges. “You _knew_ —”

“You needed to know—”

“You sent him _knowing_ , you _knew_ what it would do to him, you—”

“He has to get past this.”

“ _Past it!?_ ”

Reborn chose this time to punch him in the face, but Tsuna’d seen it coming. He rocked back with it, rocked forward, ducked low, reached for his gloves—

He gasped a breath and sat down abruptly on the floor. He was not okay. This was not okay. This was…God, he’d been a second away from _attacking Reborn_ , he was losing his _mind_.

Reborn gave him a moment to breathe, then knelt down and grabbed him by the front of the shirt—more effective than it used to be, now that Reborn was a normal size. There was no threat in it, though. Reborn just looked sad. “You had to know, Tsuna.”

Tsuna laughed, unbalanced even to his own ears. “I had to know? I never would have agreed to this. You know I would’ve made you kill me first. You waited until it was too late, and _now_ I have to know!?”

Reborn studied his face with those black eyes, the only thing that hadn’t changed after the curse was lifted. Utterly black, no visible distinction between iris and pupil, no visible white. It made him look like nothing human. People assumed he wore contacts, and were terrified anyway.

Tsuna found Reborn’s eyes comforting. He was aware that that was completely weird.

After a good, long staring session, Reborn released Tsuna’s shirt and sat down on the floor beside him, leaning on his hands and tipping his head back to examine the ceiling. “We all had obligations,” he said quietly.

Tsuna looked up at the ceiling, too. It was beautiful. A reproduction of the work of some famous Italian Renaissance artist, Tsuna could never remember which one. The Ninth had picked it before he died.

Obligations.

“Why did _you_ join the mafia, Reborn?”

Reborn snorted. “It was all I was fit for. Loser Tsuna.”

Tsuna laughed a little, noticing that it sounded much more like a real laugh, that he was a lot less angry than he had been. Which meant Reborn could still play him like a violin. Some mafia boss he was.

In the spirit of fairness, though, Tsuna had to admit that Reborn hadn’t created the situation in Italy. All he’d done was involve Tsuna in it. If he’d told the truth earlier, Tsuna would have gotten himself killed one way or another, probably on purpose, and he wouldn’t now be in a position to help. For what that was worth.

“Gokudera’s going to college,” he said.

“Oh?”

Reborn didn’t sound upset with the idea. Good. That meant Tsuna wouldn’t have to throw a fit. Another fit. “He might even get into Todai if he took the entrance exams. If he doesn’t go, that’s…that’s wasting our resources.”

Reborn laughed. “It would be good to have someone able to keep track of what Shouichi and Giannini and Spanner are up to.”

Tsuna looked over at Reborn, who was smiling aimlessly. What was with all this agreement? Tsuna wanted to send his right hand away for however many years a doctorate in physics would take, and Reborn didn’t care?

“What are you up to?” Tsuna demanded.

“What do you mean, what am I up to? What are you up to?”

“You never just agree with me. It’s creepy.”

“I assume you have a reason to want Gokudera distracted for a few years.”

Tsuna looked away again. “I need to spend some time in Italy.”

“Mm,” Reborn said.

“I don’t even know who works for us there. I don’t know the people who live there, I don’t know any of the rules, I don’t know _anything_ , I’m—”

“Hysterical,” Reborn murmured.

Tsuna took a breath. “There’s a lot I need to know, and I’m a slow learner. It’ll take years.” No comment from Reborn. “Gokudera needs an excuse not to come along.”

“He won’t take it,” Reborn said. “That’s why he needs to toughen up.”

“I just have to say it right,” Tsuna insisted. “He’ll stay.”

“He won’t.”

“He will.”

Reborn stood and brushed off his pants. “You’ll learn,” he said, and walked away. Probably off to find Yamamoto. Tsuna sometimes wondered who Yamamoto’s boss really was. He and Reborn had a slightly disturbing world’s-greatest-hitman and protégé thing going, and, well. Tsuna wondered, that was all.

Once Reborn was out of sight, Tsuna sighed and pitched over onto his back in a manner unbecoming a mafia boss, prodding at the sore spot on his jaw where Reborn had hit him. It would probably bruise.

He stared at the ceiling and wondered how he was going to fix all of this. All of this, starting with Gokudera and ending with the Vongola’s whole position in the mafia world.

And now that he was really looking, he could see that the cherub in the bottom right had been laughing at him all along.

“Um, Boss?” Chrome’s voice. “Are you…okay?”

Tsuna sat up and smiled for Chrome.

* * *

_“Campania has the highest murder rate in Italy, among the highest in the world.”_

* * *

Reborn was right. Gokudera wouldn’t go.

“Tenth, if you can’t trust me, then you need to find somebody else to be your right hand.”

As if Tsuna didn’t know full well that Gokudera would blow any would-be replacement sky-high. Also, Gokudera was misunderstanding. He was _completely_ misunderstanding.

“No, Gokudera, it’s not that I don’t trust you! It’s just—”

“You’re trying to protect me. I know.” Gokudera smiled at him, but it wasn’t a happy smile. Not the smile Tsuna was used to. It bothered him more than he would have expected. “You don’t trust me to be able to take care of myself. That makes me a burden on you, Tenth.”

“It doesn’t,” Tsuna insisted.

“It does,” Gokudera cut in.

“No!” Tsuna was at least as surprised as Gokudera by the outburst, but he ploughed on into the silence. “No, you’re not a burden, this is just one thing, you don’t—I don’t _mind_. I mean, if I can’t protect you from something like this—if you guys don’t need me, then—then why am I here at all? I know you like it best when you’re doing things for me, but…can’t I do things for you?”

Gokudera burst out laughing. Tsuna stood blinking at him. What?

“Tenth, you really—no, I know you don’t know, but—look, I’m never going to be able to pay you back for what you’ve _already_ done for me. For us! Trust me, none of us would last a month without you around, not even Hibari. So you don’t owe me anything. But if you’re really determined to do something for me anyway…you could let me stay with you.”

_You’ll learn_ , Reborn had said.

“I don’t want anything to happen to any of you because of me,” Tsuna argued, not sure what he was trying to say at this point.

“Yeah, I know.” Gokudera _grinned_ , it was surreal. “If it makes you feel better, most of us would be dead by now if we hadn’t met you. You’re good for us. Don’t worry so much.”

_Gokudera_ was telling _Tsuna_ to worry less. It was a world gone wrong.

* * *

_“Around here, opportunities don’t happen; you have to rip them out with your teeth, buy them, or dig for them. They have to be here, somewhere, somehow. Nothing is left to chance.”_

* * *

Six years later, and Tsuna knows better than anyone but Haru where it is the money comes from. He knows that Gokudera will never leave. He knows Italy’s rules. He even knows why Reborn trained him to kill before introducing him to business.

He’s spent most of these six years frantically trying to run a criminal empire without crossing the line between illegal and evil—mainly with the help of Haru, Shouichi, and Hana, everybody else being either ignorant of money or unclear on the point.

After the crashing disaster of Ercolano, he’s also tried to stay away from the other families. He doesn’t want any vendettas. The Varia are getting bored and annoyed, but other than that impending problem, he’d thought he was doing well. He thought he’d kept the family out of trouble.

Pride goeth, etc.

“The Grazianos are up to something,” Gokudera says. He’s become the designated person to keep Tsuna up to speed. He’s had to. Apparently that car-burning story got around, and they now live surreal lives in which people are too afraid of Tsuna to talk to him at all, but they’re perfectly comfortable pouring out sob stories to Gokudera.

It breaks Tsuna’s brain a little more every time he lets himself think about it.

“Up to something?” he asks.

“Yeah. Ever since the Cava family got wiped out, they’ve been a pain in the ass. The Grazianos and the Cavas used to keep busy killing each other off, but now the Grazianos don’t have enough to do. Their girls are starting to show up in the weirdest places, not their territory. In Naples. In Ercolano. At our construction sites, and we’re in trouble if they get a look at the Mosca. I definitely do not want any Grazianos making their own giant robots. And Spanner’s such a spaz, all a girl’d have to do would be to bat her eyelashes at him and give him a shiny engineering problem, and we’d all be fucked.”

In Tsuna’s experience, it doesn’t take eyelash batting. It doesn’t even take a girl. “Luckily, Spanner doesn’t like to leave Japan. Ercolano?”

“Yeah. The Birra family.”

The Birra family, yes. Tsuna remembers them. He’s pretty sure some of them tried to kill him one time a few years ago, and he’d retaliated with fire and death. “How likely is it…?”

“Mafiosi tend to have long memories, Tenth.”

Tsuna runs his hands through his hair and forces himself not to whimper. “All we can do right now is watch.”

“And prepare,” Gokudera says, and Tsuna nods agreement. They sit in mutual weary silence for a while.

“How did you learn all of this anyway, Gokudera?” It’s a question Tsuna always asks. The answer is usually horrifying.

“I made Lambo follow Giannini to Naples. See what was what. You know you can’t ask Giannini to pay attention to anything but machines.”

Other times, though, the answer is kind of hilarious. Like now. Tsuna puts a hand over his mouth to hide a smile. “Have you submitted your expense report for that yet?”

“Why do we even _have_ expense reports?” Gokudera explodes, which means the answer to the question is _no_. “Who ever heard of hitmen writing expense reports? This is bullshit. No offense to you, Tenth, of course, but _that woman_ —”

“She knows you’re back,” Tsuna points out. “She’ll find you sooner or later. And when she does…”

“ _Tenth_.”

“She makes me write reports, too, Gokudera. She wants to know why we can’t all be more like Hibari-san.” Who is wonderful about expense reports, and terrible about reports containing any actual information.

“ _There_ you are,” comes the voice of the woman in question from the doorway.

“Good morning, Haru,” Tsuna says.

“Good morning, Tsuna-san! And _you_. You and I need to have a talk.”

People often tell Tsuna that the whole family shouldn’t feel free to wander in and out of his office. He always smiles and nods and ignores them. Reborn has actually managed to fool all these people into believing Tsuna’s something other than a giant spaz with an expensive desk. Amazing.

“I hear,” Haru goes on, arms folded disapprovingly, “that Lambo flew first class to Naples. How generous of you, Gokudera-san. _Do you think money grows on trees?_ ”

“He had to go Alitalia,” Gokudera says defensively. “He might’ve crashed and died—you know what they’re like. I thought he might as well go down with style.”

“Alitalia is perfectly safe. It has better accident rates than Japan Airlines.”

“Why do you know that?”

“It’s my job.”

“Then why does everybody always clap when the plane lands?”

“Because Italians are insane, Gokudera-san. Know thyself. More to the point, that first class ticket? It’s coming out of your pocket.”

“Bullshit!”

“Don’t you swear at me! What kind of irresponsible right hand are you, anyway, blowing that kind of money?”

“I’m the military right hand,” Gokudera says. “You’re the economic right hand.”

Haru’s mouth, already preparing for the next volley of abuse, drops open, and she blushes. She’s apparently never going to outgrow the blushing.

Tsuna recognizes Gokudera’s technique from the Yamamoto Takeshi School of Staying out of Trouble. Life became decidedly more hilarious once Yamamoto and Gokudera really started working together.

Unfortunately for Gokudera, Haru is familiar with this technique, too.

“Don’t think you can flatter your way out of this!” she shouts, thinking better of the blush. “You’re paying the difference between first class and economy. No weaseling.”

“You wanted to cram him with his stork legs in coach?” Gokudera demands. “I’m not paying more than half the difference.”

“You’re paying all of it.”

“Sixty percent.”

“ _All_.”

“Seventy percent.”

“I can keep this up all day, Mr. Irresponsible Right Hand.”

“You’ll get wrinkles young from being such a goddamn pinch-penny.”

“Am I interrupting something?” Dino asks with a smile, lounging against the doorframe.

The room falls silent. Dino is supposed to be in Italy. If he’s in Japan instead, something has gone wrong.

“Not at all, Dino-san,” Haru says, recovering first. “I’ll just write you a bill, Gokudera-san.”

Gokudera snorts, and waves her imperiously away. She scowls at him, but turns to leave without comment. Tsuna notes the bump in the middle of her back under her jacket, caused by the annoyingly short-barreled 357 Night Guard she insists on carrying even though it’s inaccurate at anything over five feet and kicks like a mule.

Tsuna’s going to have to ask Bianchi if she’ll share her tailor. There’s not a lot of point to Haru carrying concealed if it isn’t actually _concealed_. And maybe it’s time to try to talk her into that .32 Beretta Tomcat again. He rubs at his temple and writes himself a note.

“She’s making us rich, Tenth,” Gokudera mutters with reluctant admiration once he’s sure she’s out of earshot. “She’s a real Dante Passarelli.”

“Dante Passarelli’s family says he was completely legit,” Dino points out.

Gokudera rolls his eyes. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent, as far as Gokudera’s concerned.

“What brings you to Japan, Dino?” Tsuna asks.

Dino sighs and rubs his hands together. Tsuna isn’t used to seeing Dino look nervous. Reborn’s students, Tsuna knows, tend to have the nervousness burned right out of them.

He doesn’t really want to hear what Dino has to say.

“Bad news, little brother.”

* * *

_“In the Camorra system murder is necessary; it’s like depositing money in the bank, purchasing a franchise, or breaking off a friendship. It’s no different from the rest of your life, part of the daily routine of every Camorra family, boss, and affiliate.”_

* * *

The bad news is, probably unsurprisingly, about the Birra family. The Birras, the Grazianos, the end of Southern Italy as they know it.

Haha. If only.

It looks like another power struggle, another Camorra war. Windows shot out. Cars burned. Bodies stacking up in impromptu mass graves all over the south. At least they haven’t joined up to attack the Vongola yet, which is what Tsuna was most afraid of. Thus far, in fact, the Vongola and their allies haven’t been dragged in at all. As long as it stays that way, Tsuna plans to keep his people well out of it.

Unfortunately, evidence suggests that it’s not going to stay that way, which is why Gokudera’s following the whole thing with a level of obsession he once reserved for possible alien sightings.

Tsuna makes sure to keep Yamamoto in the room for any meetings with Gokudera in which unpleasant information is likely to come up. Unless he’s upset beyond reason, Gokudera tries to spare Tsuna the gory details. Yamamoto, however, is sure to ask all the questions Tsuna would like to, and Gokudera is sure to answer him in the most blunt, clear, insulting way possible.

A good system all around. Especially since Tsuna’s fairly sure that Yamamoto knows what he’s up to and finds it hilarious.

“So what do they say?” Yamamoto asks of Gokudera’s stack of wiretap transcripts, stolen by Mukuro from the carabinieri.

“Blah blah loyalty, blah blah traitors, blah blah dissolving people in acid,” Gokudera mutters. He flips over a couple of pages, then throws the whole stack down on Tsuna’s desk in apparent disgust. “It’s Vietnam all over again.” _Vietnam_. It is, for whatever reason, the name given to the 2004 Secondigliano war. The one Gokudera grew up in the middle of. “We’re gonna have to comb through this crap for hours. Is Chrome in town?”

Tsuna nods. “I’ll call her tomorrow.” Chrome is the best for surveillance, stakeouts, close reading of boring documents, and any other job involving hours of attention to mind-numbing detail. As far as anyone can tell, Chrome never gets distracted, bored, or even impatient.

Sometimes Tsuna wonders if Mukuro’s broken something in her brain. Of course, even if he has, it’s too late to do anything about it now. And Chrome doesn’t seem unhappy with her life.

It’s really none of Tsuna’s business.

* * *

They’re involved in the war before Chrome has a chance to make it through the wiretap transcripts.

Fuuta is killed while walking down the street in Scampia. Tsuna’s first reaction is disbelief. _Fuuta_. He’s Vongola, yes, but he’s no soldier. On top of that, he's priceless alive. Tsuna had worried about people abducting him, yes, but _killing_ him? Never.

One might ask what the hell he was doing in Scampia, of course. Gokudera does ask, in something approaching a scream. But they’ll never know.

Fuuta’s death isn’t the first, not by a long shot. It is one of the closest, though, and it’s certainly the closest one that Tsuna feels this responsible for.

He can’t remember the last time Fuuta reported in. He’s always been independent, closer to Reborn and Bianchi than to anyone nearer his own age. He wanders in, drops invaluable information on Tsuna’s desk, then wanders out again with a proud smile. He’s hard to keep track of.

Was. He _was_ hard to keep track of. Keeping track of him now will be the easiest thing in the world.

“A message,” Gokudera rasps in a raw, exhausted voice. “That’s all it was, Tenth. A message.”

Seventy-four bullets. Seventy-four months, Gokudera explains: a little over six years. That’s how long it’s been since the last time Tsuna ran into the Birra family. And they remember.

They remember how it ended, that is. They seem a little less precise on the subject of how it began.

“ _You_. You should’ve let us kill ‘em all the last time!” Squalo shouts. “This is what you get, dicking around, acting like the mafia’s all fuckin’ _daisies_ —”

“Don’t talk to the boss like that!” Gokudera yells back.

“Tsuna, what are we going to do?” Yamamoto, worried and pale. Thinking of that other war in that other timeline. Thinking of his father.

Bel sniggers. “Look at him. He doesn’t have a clue. If _my_ boss—”

“Kill them all,” Tsuna interrupts quietly. And the silence is devastating.

He doesn’t know why they’re so shocked. There’s nothing else to do.

Last time, the Birra had gone for him, not his family. Not _Fuuta_ , who was barely involved. Tsuna had thought he’d fixed the problem, he’d thought it was a misunderstanding. A mistake, the way it had been with the Shimon family. It clearly isn’t. He doesn’t know what the Ninth and Giotto would want him to do, but he can see what he _has_ to do.

This started as a war between the Birras and the Grazianos, but the Grazianos are apparently beaten, or beaten enough. And the Birras, with one victory under their belts, have had time to think about other families they hate. Or maybe it’s simpler than that: maybe some of the Grazianos talked. Maybe the Grazianos saw more of the Vongola construction sites than Gokudera hoped, and maybe they told the Birras what they’d seen. The odds were good that this was, at its heart, just an attempted hostile business takeover. To which there is only one way to respond.

Tsuna knows the rules now.

“I’m glad the Ninth isn’t alive anymore,” Basil says, words dropped into the still pond of Tsuna’s office, and Tsuna watches the ripples touch everyone in turn. Yes. They’re all glad Ninth isn’t alive and won’t have to see this. The Ninth had hoped they would be better than this. He’d hoped they wouldn’t repeat his mistakes.

* * *

Tsuna lets the Varia handle the funeral. A Birra funeral; a Birra family gathering. If Tsuna learned nothing else from Shimon, he learned that there’s no better time to strike than at a family event.

Which is why he never has any.

Reborn says it’s too late for mercy, that assassination can’t be done by halves. He and Bianchi go off on their own, and Tsuna doesn’t ask any questions.

There are a lot of questions that Tsuna hasn’t asked about this mission. He saw the name _Luca_ on the list of Birra family members, and he didn’t ask Gokudera anything at all. Luca is a very common name.

Tsuna and his guardians hunt down the stragglers, the ones not attending the funeral. There are a surprising number of them. Maybe word got out that the Vongola boss and his guardians were wandering around in the open, and it was a target too tempting to pass up. Maybe Reborn made sure word got out.

Gokudera pushes a man into an open well and throws a bomb in after him. Murder and burial, all in one.

Yamamoto cuts down two men at once with grim efficiency.

Mukuro and Chrome stand perfectly still, and the people around them imagine their own deaths with such conviction that it kills them.

Ryouhei sticks to fists.

Lambo can electrocute people from as far as ten feet away by now.

Tsuna burns everyone who comes close. He has at least learned to be quick.

Hibari isn’t here, but Tsuna doesn’t believe he’s stayed out of this. He’s just doing things his own way. Tsuna’s almost glad he doesn’t have to watch.

White light and flames. Blood everywhere. And the _sounds_.

It’s over so quickly that Tsuna feels sick. He tries to convince himself that they’re not attacking the helpless, but it’s hard to believe. Hard to believe when killing so many people is so horribly easy.

Once it’s over, Tsuna stands next to Yamamoto and watches Gokudera and Ryouhei clean up. He knows he should help. He knows, but he can’t make himself move.

“I used to think we’d never be murderers,” Yamamoto says without any particular emphasis, staring across the scorched and blood-spattered ground. Tsuna can’t see his expression, but he doesn’t really need to.

“So did I.”

* * *

_“The fact is that the only thing you learn here is how to die.”_

* * *

“It’s over, Tenth,” Gokudera says, brimming with professional pride. “Yamamoto and Lambo just landed, so all our people are accounted for, no casualties, no arrests. Reborn says we got them all—or at least all the real members. Maybe not the lookouts or whatever, because who even knows who those guys work for? It’s over, though. Nobody’s left who can come after us.”

They’re lucky the carabinieri, confronted with dozens of dead bodies, don’t expect the murderers to be foreign. No, more than that—they _assume_ the murderers were native.

Tsuna smiles. “Well done.” It feels like the whole world is underwater. Sound is echoing, strange; he can’t quite breathe. He hopes Gokudera hasn’t noticed.

“Thank you, Tenth.” Gokudera says, pleased. He hasn’t noticed. Good. “I’ll see you in the morning. We have a meeting with Chiavarone, you remember.”

“Of course.” Tsuna hadn’t even remembered Dino was in the country. “Eight, wasn’t it?” Meetings are always at eight.

“That’s right.”

Tsuna watches Gokudera go. Ten minutes later, it occurs to him that he’s still standing in a darkened, empty hallway, staring at the place Gokudera disappeared.

This is doing no one any good. What if Yamamoto came home and found him here? He would _understand_ , he would try to be distracting, and then Tsuna would cry in front of his Rain Guardian. That would be so embarrassing.

Bearing this in mind, Tsuna carefully walks to his suite, touching each door as he passes. Hibari’s door, rarely used. Chrome’s door, which is also Mukuro’s, Ken’s, Chikusa’s. Lambo’s door. Kyoko and Haru’s. Ryouhei’s, though the room has been mostly empty since he and Hana got married and Hana demanded an above-ground home. Gokudera’s door, then Yamamoto’s, which is the one Gokudera went into. Tsuna reaches his own door—the very last—and eases his way inside. He goes to his bathroom and locks himself in, because people have been known to barge into his rooms in the middle of the night before.

He falls to his knees in front of the toilet and throws up everything in his stomach. When that’s done, he rinses his mouth out, then curls into a ball on the tile floor and tries to think.

_Think_.

He’s the boss of a mafia family for God’s _sake_. If he can’t live with his choices ( _choose your favorite hell_ ), then he shouldn’t make them. He should step down for Xanxus and wash his hands of the entire mess. This was never what he wanted his life to be.

Is he really going to step down and abandon everyone who was pulled into this world because of him?

No. No, he won’t, not if he spends every night for the rest of his life locked in this bathroom so no one can see how weak their boss really is.

His throat’s burning, but it’s probably just the bile.

He knows there’s no one he can panic to about this; a boss can’t be seen to panic. He’s not Sawada Tsunayoshi anymore, not really. (Poor Loser Tsuna, left behind, forgotten.) When people look at him now, all they see is Vongola X, and Vongola X isn’t a person, he’s a symbol of strength. A symbol of strength is not allowed to run to the people he’s meant to be protecting to cry on their floors.

He’s not allowed.

He could still run crying to Reborn. Reborn is the one who made him a symbol, and he owes Tsuna for that. For everything. But Reborn’s not here, and neither are Basil or Tsuna’s dad. They’re still in Italy, monitoring the effects of what Tsuna’s done.

What Tsuna’s done.

He clenches his teeth until his jaw aches. What kind of sympathy does a murderer think he deserves, anyway?

The thing is, he’s killed people before and it didn’t tear him apart then. He hadn’t been horribly upset even the first time he killed someone undeniably human, but…Byakuran had deserved it. He’d hurt Uni, he’d hurt Tsuna’s family, and Tsuna had had all the evidence he could possibly want that the world would be better off without Byakuran in it.

He sincerely doubts the entire Birra family deserved it. And he definitely doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know all their _names_.

He grinds his forehead into the cool tile and orders himself to pull it together. By eight o’clock in the morning, he has to be Vongola X again, or everything he accomplished today will be ruined. And he doesn’t want to have to do it again.

God, he doesn’t want to. Especially not when it may turn out to have been futile. There are hundreds of clans. The destruction of one family (or two, or twelve) will hardly even change the tempo of business. It won’t keep his family safe for long.

He hadn’t wanted to bear responsibility for the sins of the previous generations of Vongola, and now he’s committing his own. He’d said he would destroy the Vongola himself before it came to this. God, he’d been so young. Destroy the Vongola and leave his people to be picked off one by one? He can’t wipe out the only thing that keeps his family safe.

Strange that Giotto accepted that condition. Maybe he just doesn’t understand what things are like in the modern world. The kind of family Giotto wants wouldn’t survive, not the way the mafia is now.

Tsuna sits up abruptly and stares down at his ring, eyes wide.

* * *

_“Campania clans, unlike the old Cosa Nostra clans, are not obsessed with a truce.”_

* * *

He’d like to go to Hibari first, because Hibari won’t tell anyone, and he’ll make it really clear whether or not he finds this idea worthy. Unfortunately, Hibari is somewhere in Italy doing whatever it is he does with his time. Tsuna’s sure that whatever he’s doing will someday, somehow benefit the family, but that doesn’t help much at the moment.

He goes to Kyoko instead. She won’t be quite as blunt as Hibari, but she also won’t yell at him, won’t tell anyone, and will let him know if his crazy idea just won’t work.

“That just won’t work, Tsu-kun.”

He sighs. He thought she might say that.

“Mafia families have been killing each other off since the beginning,” she reminds him. “I understand why you did what you did with the Birra, but joining in won’t _change_ anything.”

“I wasn’t suggesting a bloodbath,” Tsuna says defensively.

“Tsu-kun, I don’t think you know what you’re suggesting yet. ‘Let’s destroy the mafia’ isn’t very specific.”

Well. No, maybe it isn't specific. But the basic idea is one of Reborn’s most important lessons: if you can’t run, then turn and fight.

“You don’t think we can do it?”

She studies his face, hesitates. “For a start,” she says, “you’re going to have to talk to Haru and Hana and Irie-san about our legitimate businesses. We can’t run out of money halfway through this.”

“I’ll do that,” he says, aiming for a serious tone. He knows he’s smiling like an idiot, but it can’t be helped.

“You can’t destroy the entire phenomenon of organized crime in Italy, Tsu-kun. The very idea is insane. You’ll only be able to make it less…prevalent. And only if we’re very lucky.”

“Okay.”

“Although heaven knows you’re not happy unless you’re throwing yourself at a brick wall.”

“Mm.”

“And when you just agree with everything I say, I know you’re not listening to me.”

“I’m listening!”

She laughs and loops her arm through his, leans her head against his shoulder. He smiles down at her.

“Well, since you’re agreeing to everything,” she murmurs, “Haru and I were thinking about children. We want you to be the father. And I guess we should hurry, before you get yourself killed and we have to settle for Hibari-san.”

“Oka—wait, _what?_ ” She definitely shouldn’t be allowed to spring this kind of thing on him in the middle of a life-altering mafia conversation. And besides that, besides…

Well, of all the ways he’s pictured women offering to have his children—and he has pictured it, in the embarrassed privacy of his own mind, because Haru went through a phase that made it impossible not to—it’d never gone quite this way. Somehow. And he hasn’t thought about it at all since Kyoko and Haru got married in all but law.

“You’re not serious, are you? Kyoko, are you _serious?_ ”

She smiles at him.

“ _Hibari-san!?_ ”

She turns to prop her forehead against his shoulder, and she laughs at him. She laughs at length. Which probably means she is serious. About everything, up to and including Hibari.

Oh God.

Tsuna stares across the room and tries to think reasonable thoughts about his situation. His life. All the crazy shit that’s happened every single day since he was fourteen, when he was introduced to the profession he’s now planning to destroy.

All that, and now his first crush has offered to have his children. Sort of.

He starts laughing, too.

* * *

He goes to Gokudera next, because Gokudera will tell everyone. He’ll argue and persuade and cajole so that Tsuna doesn’t have to.

He will. But he’s going to have to shout at Tsuna for a while first.

“But, Tenth, that’s _impossible!_ ” he cries. “Do you know how many people are going to try to _kill_ you? And what’s going to happen to—what’s going to happen…?”

_To me. To us_. “Gokudera, I only agreed to be boss so that I could protect my family. Protect you. It isn’t working. I need to find a better way to keep you safe, that’s all.”

Gokudera takes a deep breath and musters further arguments. “This life is all most of us know,” he says. “It’s the only way we’ve ever lived.”

Tsuna nods. “We won’t be changing _our_ methods that much. Not at first. We’re halfway legitimate as it is, thanks to Hana. I need to talk to Reborn and…” and Giotto, but maybe this wasn’t the time to bring that up, “and everyone about the details. It’s the way the other families work that I don’t like.”

“But—”

“Dino sees the mafia as a way to protect the people in his territory from government corruption. Enma and I see it as a way to protect our families at the expense of everybody else. Enma takes it further than I do, and some people take it further than he does. Then there are a lot of people who just see it as a way to look scary and make money. It’s gone too far.”

“Boss,” ouch, the burden of responsibility, “you can’t keep the family safe if you’re dead.”

“I can’t keep the family safe this way, either.” He wills Gokudera to understand. “I don’t think I can survive hating myself this much. I _can’t_ —”

“Hating yourself? But—no, you never would have started—”

“But I finished it. I finished it, and I knew that not everyone I killed was guilty. I was playing by mafia rules. And now another family could come after us on behalf of the Birra, and they’d have every right to do it. I don’t like these rules. I want new ones.”

Gokudera collapses into a chair and throws his head back, as if Tsuna’s dragged all the energy out of him. “Well,” he says bravely, “I’ll have to learn some new life skills, I guess.”

“You should have gone to college when I told you to.”

“Tenth!”

* * *

Reborn calls it Vongola intuition. Sometimes things that Tsuna predicts actually happen. More often than is quite normal.

Tsuna hates it.

“Most of the families do not care,” Basil says. “Or else they are glad. But the Secondigliano clans think this is a good opportunity to take over our territory and the factories there, so they are claiming they were the Birra’s allies all along.”

“Were they?” Tsuna asks.

Basil gives him a disappointed look. “It does not matter, Sawada-dono.”

It doesn’t matter. Haha. Of course. Tsuna sighs and scrubs his face. “Dad? Ideas?”

“They’re cockroaches,” Iemitsu says. “Even with a full-scale bloodbath, we’d miss a few. It’s a moot point, anyway: you don’t have the stomach for it.”

Tsuna smiles vaguely and thinks of cool, white tile. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”

Iemitsu snorts and smacks him gently upside the head. “Reborn?”

“We have no right,” Reborn says grimly. “Acting before we’re threatened would be against tradition. The other families wouldn’t stand for it.”

_Tradition_. Tsuna’s getting even more tired of the word than he was back when he worked at Takezushi and had to listen to the old men going on about it for hours.

“I’m not worried about tradition,” Tsuna says. He takes a steadying breath. “I don’t care about the other families.”

Basil’s eyes widen dramatically. Iemitsu’s jaw drops and he gets half a word out, but Reborn waves a hand and cuts him off. He studies Tsuna for a long moment, inscrutable. “Interesting, Tsuna. How do you think you’ll survive that attitude?”

“If I make the mafia powerless…then I won’t need to worry.”

“And if I were a sparkly unicorn—” Iemitsu begins incredulously, but Reborn interrupts again.

“You think you’ve found a way to do that?”

“I’m looking for one.”

Reborn sighs and sits back. “Reckless,” he says. “You might have paid closer attention when I was teaching you about strategy.”

Reborn isn’t arguing, he’s just complaining. That means he _doesn’t mind_. It also means he’s taking this better than anyone else did, which is. Strange. But Tsuna’s definitely not going to question it.

“I was paying attention,” Tsuna insists, a little giddy. If Reborn and Giotto are both on his side, then he can do this. With them and his family, he can do _anything_. He can. “The element of surprise.”

Reborn hums at him. “You’re going to need the element of surprise, yes. And blind, stubborn, idiotic persistence after that.” Speculative once-over. “At least you have the idiocy in spades.”

People wonder why Tsuna’s title hasn’t gone to his head. These people have apparently never met Reborn.

“Reborn,” Iemitsu cuts in, appalled. “You’re not taking him seriously, are you?” Basil’s still staring at Tsuna with his mouth open.

Reborn just gives one of the famous impenetrable looks, and Iemitsu sighs. “All right. Fine. Let’s talk about this catastrophically insane idea of yours. We still have our original problem, which is: they’re cockroaches. Do your guardians know about this… _plan_ , for lack of a better word?”

“They do.”

“And they’re with you on this?”

“Of course they are.”

Lambo had initially burst into tears, but Tsuna won him over by promising that no Bovinos would be shot. Ryouhei is game for anything extreme. Gokudera required a knock-down, drag-out argument and Yamamoto required two hours of careful explanation, but they’re both behind him now. Hibari finds the discipline in Southern Italy to be utterly lacking, and has threatened to fix it before. The prospect of a mafia family breaking the back of mafia power in Italy, meanwhile, delights Mukuro down to the bottom of his twisted soul. And finally, there’s Chrome, who has a higher opinion of Tsuna’s intelligence than she ought to, and is largely indifferent to the fate of anyone who isn’t Vongola. She sees nothing wrong with Tsuna’s plan.

Tsuna doesn’t feel like sharing all these fascinating details.

* * *

_“The strength of Italian criminal business lies precisely in maintaining a double track, in never renouncing its criminal origins.”_

* * *

The Vongola family is sitting around a table having what Tsuna facetiously refers to as a meeting. A meeting about Tsuna’s insane idea.

Well, they’re mostly sitting around the table. Squalo is lying on top of it, hair hanging down to the floor, while Yamamoto absently pokes him in the side with the eraser of one of Tsuna’s pencils. Gokudera is scowling about the lack of respect, but since Uri is also sprawled on the table, he doesn’t have sufficient moral high ground to comment.

Bianchi sits on Gokudera’s other side, looking bored, and Reborn is beside her, even more bored. Chrome is here, but Mukuro hasn’t deigned to be physically present. Lambo sits very close to Tsuna and fidgets. Ryouhei is sitting next to Hana, who’s ignoring him, and explaining his latest extreme idea to Kyoko and Haru. They’re looking very patient about it all. Kyoko is passing documents to Hana, who’s frantically typing something. I-Pin is doing homework. The scientists are ominously absent.

It never fails to amuse Tsuna how scary and professional they manage to look when non-family is present. It’s like they only have so much professionalism in them, and don’t dare waste it on other family members.

“Out and out attack is just going to bring us full circle,” Gokudera announces. “We need to hit them somewhere it actually hurts.”

“Squalo, I need to talk to Xanxus,” Tsuna says.

Squalo squirms around so that he can stare incredulously at Tsuna. “The boss hates your fucking guts,” he explains slowly and carefully.

“Yes,” Tsuna agrees. “I know that. I need to talk to him anyway. Convince him. I don’t care if you lie, I don’t care if it takes a year, I _need_ to talk to him.”

“Out of his fuckin’ gourd,” Squalo informs Yamamoto. Yamamoto smiles and shrugs.

Tsuna and Xanxus have worked out a set of rules based on grade school playground logic that, sadly enough, seem to do the trick. To wit: Xanxus will follow Tsuna’s orders as long as he (1) never has to see Tsuna’s face, and (2) can convincingly tell himself that the orders weren’t actually Tsuna’s—that they came from Reborn instead, or even Gokudera.

Meanwhile, Tsuna will allow the Varia a high degree of autonomy and will clean up Xanxus’s more dramatic tantrums so long as Xanxus (1) gives detailed reports on any attempts to talk him into overthrowing Tsuna, and (2) never works with any family without first clearing it with Gokudera.

Tsuna will support and accept Xanxus as long as Xanxus turns his loathing of Tsuna to the family’s advantage. Tsuna isn’t too worried. It’s hard to conspire with Xanxus when he tries to kill anyone who so much as mentions Tsuna’s name.

If there are orders Tsuna doesn’t want to give over the phone, Squalo and Yamamoto usually have to act as go-betweens. Gokudera tends to be physically close to Tsuna, which means that Xanxus won’t talk to him because he runs too much of a risk of seeing Tsuna’s face, so he sends Squalo. Squalo and Gokudera hate each other, so Gokudera sends Yamamoto.

Sometimes the conveyance of orders is like a really bloodthirsty game of Telephone. By some miracle, though, it occasionally works. All involved parties agree that that’s the best that can be expected.

Tsuna can’t trust this conversation to the Telephone method. God only knows what would happen if Xanxus misunderstood. Death, fire, vendettas.

“Okay. While we’re waiting for Xanxus, which’ll take forever because he’s a dick,” Gokudera says, “we have to figure out a way to undercut everything that supports the mafia.”

“You make it sound easy, Gokudera-san, but it’s almost impossible,” Haru says. “You know some family or other owns just about everything. That’s an awful lot of support.”

“If we want to kill their businesses, we’ll have to undersell them,” Kyoko says. “In everything from groceries to real estate. Haru’s right, it’s going to be almost impossible, even with Spanner helping. The Mosca cut labor costs, but we’ve been using them all along, and we’re barely holding our own. It’s that pesky habit we have of obeying safety restrictions. Nobody else has that habit.”

“There’s hardly any legitimate work in Puglia,” Haru says brusquely. “We’ll hire some kids. They come cheap.”

“Haru!”

“Tsuna-san, they can work for us, or they can work for the Sacra Corona Unita, kidnapping people and selling them for parts.” She folds her arms and sticks her chin out. “Your choice.”

“Nice how they branched out,” Squalo throws in. “I thought they were gonna go under at one point, the SCU. Organs, though, real money-maker. Maybe we should get into that.”

“No,” Tsuna snaps, more irritated than he should be, given that Squalo probably isn’t serious. “Why aren’t there jobs in Puglia?”

“Please don’t try to fix Italy, Boss,” Gokudera says, despairing. “ _Please_.”

“Well.” Tsuna glances at his ring. “I think that might be the easiest way.”

A moment of stunned silence, broken by Reborn’s laugh. Reborn, Tsuna thinks irritably, has been really, really unhelpful this entire meeting.

“Are you for fuckin’ _real?_ ” Squalo howls. “The Romans couldn’t fix the south!”

“If by that you mean the Romans fucked the south over, then yeah, I agree,” Gokudera snarls. “Them and everybody who came after them. Actually, there’s an idea, Tenth,” he goes on, thoughtful now. “The easiest thing would be to take down the north. Then they’d have a harder time screwing the south, and we wouldn’t have to scrabble along on rock bottom being criminals. Problem solved.”

“You’d have been a criminal if you were born in Shangri-La, brat. And the southerners screw themselves,” Squalo announces, arms belligerently crossed. “Wiping out the north would just cut you off from the only thing that’s holding your economy up, deadweights.”

“I don’t know how it looks from _fucking Milan_ , but—”

“Anyway, that wouldn’t stop the rest of Europe,” Haru cuts in before another meeting dissolves into a fistfight. “Isn’t the south some kind of international toxic waste dump?”

“I’m pretty sure they’re the ones dumping their shit all over Europe, actually,” Squalo says. “Which is goddamn typ—”

“We’ll start with that,” Tsuna says firmly. “I just got a bunch of reports on toxic waste in Campania.” He empties the envelope of photographs onto the table for everyone to paw through in a morbid free-for-all. He watches them, considering who he should send to look into this. He briefly, fiercely misses Fuuta. “Bianchi, if you and Basil don’t mind, I’d like you to investigate the worst areas. And we’ll need to send someone for cleanup.”

“Cleanup?” Lambo asks in the sad little voice of the person who always gets the worst jobs.

“I’ll go,” Ryouhei offers, and Tsuna nods. He’s the best choice—for the radioactive stuff, anyway. Sun types are hell on a half-life, but heavy metals are more of a problem. And then there’s the simple problem of not enough landfills and incinerators. But one step at a time.

“Borrow Lussuria,” Tsuna says. Ryouhei agrees: the more sun types, the better. “And Kyoko, I’d like you to go, too.” Tsuna braces himself for the inevitable shouting. Kyoko’s good at languages, she’s familiar with the business and the politics, and on top of that, she has a beautiful ability to smile people into submission. She’s their best negotiator. It’s just that Ryouhei is going to refuse to accept this until his dying day.

Ryouhei shouts. Kyoko ignores him. Tsuna slumps low in his chair and hopes he isn’t going to get punched this time.

“Holy shit,” Gokudera interrupts about three minutes into the Ryouhei rant. He’s still studying the photographs. “Can we agree to never let Hibari find out about this?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Chrome says in Mukuro’s voice, which is a creepy new trick the two of them have learned. “We haven’t tried biting the Camorra to death yet.”

“It’s too late, anyway,” Tsuna admits. “The first reports I got were from Hibari-san.”

Chrome smiles Mukuro’s smile and makes happy little snapping gestures with one hand. At least someone is pleased.

“What’s he doing in Campania?” Gokudera asks suspiciously. As if Tsuna ever has any idea what Hibari’s doing.

“He’ll be back on Friday,” Tsuna says, hoping that makes it sound like Hibari, you know, reports in. What he actually does is forward Tsuna a string of bills interspersed with brief, angry notes about things that annoy him (there are many such things), always concluding with, “Fix this or I’ll bite you to death.”

After years of patient explanation, Kusakabe has finally managed to convey the concept of division of labor to Hibari. Tsuna wishes he hadn’t bothered.

It does make Hibari easy to track, at least. And sometimes there are supporting notes from Kusakabe that provide context, though not as often as Tsuna might like. There are also occasional snapshots of Hibird. Just in case Tsuna was worried about Hibird.

The enraged notes on the situation in Campania were as close to hysterical as Hibari’s notes have ever been. Kusakabe’s addendum is no comfort, either; it’s the most ominously cryptic thing he’s ever written. _I’m sorry. I tried to stop him_.

Tsuna’s already dreading Friday.

“What’s going on?” Hana asks, finally distracted from her computer screen.

“Tsu-kun’s going to fix the waste crisis in Italy,” Kyoko reports, a smile tugging at her lips. “Then he’s going to fix the economy. And after that, the world.”

Hana stares at Tsuna in horrified disbelief. “Sawada,” she says, “if this makes as much paperwork as I think it will, I’m going to _kill you with a letter opener_.”

“Ah,” Tsuna says.

“We’ll help, Hana-chan,” Haru tells her, would-be encouraging.

“I’ll shred paper to the _extreme!_ ” Ryouhei announces. Hana turns to him and bangs her forehead against his shoulder a few times. He throws a companionable arm around her.

Hana’s first mistake was getting that law degree, and her second was marrying Ryouhei. There’s probably no way for her to recover from those mistakes.

“Well done, Tsuna,” Reborn tells him once everyone else has cleared out. “You’re almost useless in yourself, but you do have a gift for choosing more capable people to do what needs to be done. It’s impressive.”

This is one of those Reborn compliments that sounds exactly like an insult. “Thank you?”

Reborn smiles almost fondly. “Go sleep. If you collapse from exhaustion, Gokudera will be a nuisance.”

Tsuna falls asleep and dreams that Haru is yelling at him about reports all night long. He wakes up smiling.

* * *

_“You don’t divide up an empire with a handshake. You have to cut it with a knife.”_

* * *

Hibari walks into the middle of a meeting on Friday, which is unfortunate—Tsuna’d been hoping for some time alone with him before letting him loose with the rest of the family.

Dino enjoys the entrance, at least. Dino always has gotten a kick out of the Hibari Kyouya show.

Hibari marches up to Tsuna as if they are alone, his wild eyes suggesting that he plans to rip someone’s throat out over this, and that he’s becoming less picky about whose throat by the second.

“Sawada Tsunayoshi,” he snarls.

“If we could have a minute,” Tsuna says to the rest of the room.

When the door finally shuts behind a reluctant Gokudera, Hibari and Tsuna both close their eyes and listen. Most of the footsteps echo farther and farther down the hall, but one set lingers, pacing. Gokudera, of course. The longer he hesitates, the funnier it is. His mother hen tendencies get worse every year.

Eventually, more determined footsteps approach, and then two sets move away. That would be Yamamoto. That would be Yamamoto dragging Gokudera off by force.

Tsuna opens his eyes, walks to the door, and locks it. “Let’s go,” he says.

Tsuna’s office connects to his private training room (private, that is, apart from Reborn’s ringside seat). It’s the one he uses when he’s testing out new tricks with the gloves and is afraid he might blow out a wall in one of the normal rooms. It’s the one he uses when he’s sparring with Hibari, same reason.

Today, though, the walls are in no danger. Hibari is sticking to fists, tonfa, and teeth, which could mean a number of things. That this is personal, that he’s holding everything against Tsuna in particular. That he’s too tired to use a box weapon, but too angry not to fight. That he wants this to hurt.

It definitely means that he is very, very upset.

Two hours later, they’re slumped side by side against the wall, gasping for air, covered in sweat, blood, and bruises. Hibari looks calm, almost happy, and not at all like he’s thinking of ripping throats out.

_I did that_ , Tsuna thinks smugly.

He stays quiet, though, because he’s learned (thanks to Kusakabe, again) that Hibari will speak if he’s given enough time. Rushing him only annoys him, with predictable consequences.

“You used to talk more,” Hibari points out after ten minutes or so. He sounds almost indignant.

Kusakabe is always right.

“Nobody used to listen to me,” Tsuna explains after a moment of thought. “So it didn’t matter what I said. Now everybody listens to me, and that’s…scary. If I said, just talking, ‘Gosh, it’s a shame Tokyo Tower’s so far away,’ well. Someone would try to bring it to me.” Gokudera, probably. He would force Giannini and Spanner to build a flying monstrosity to transport it. Shouichi-kun would organize it all. Yamamoto would cling to the bottom of the Tower and radio up when they were getting too close to the tops of buildings. Tsuna can see it all now.

“Do you wish Tokyo Tower were closer?” Hibari asks, deadpan.

“It’ll make me really happy if Tokyo Tower stays exactly where it is, Hibari-san.”

Hibari smirks.

In school, Tsuna would never have guessed that Hibari had a sense of humor. Having learned that he does, it at least comes as no surprise that it’s a completely evil sense of humor.

“But could I maybe get actual reports from you, every once in a while?” Tsuna asks, figuring he may as well take advantage of this good mood while it lasts. “If you’re accepting crazy requests.”

“No, that’s ridiculous.”

Tsuna laughs, feeling benevolent toward everything. Disasters in Italy notwithstanding. He knows where all of his family is, and he knows they’re safe. He’s pleasantly thrashed. He, Sawada Tsunayoshi, actually managed to _cheer up Hibari_.

There are times when his life doesn’t seem so bad.

He tips his head to the side and studies Hibari, fighting the irrational temptation to tell him about Kyoko and Haru’s plans for children: his place therein. The staring will prompt either more talking or an attack; Tsuna doesn’t really care which one.

Hibari’s hair is a mess again, he notices. It always used to be so neat. Of course, Tsuna realizes with a grin, a bird does nest in it now.

“There is no discipline in that country,” Hibari says, and Tsuna’s grin falls. “You saw.”

“I saw,” Tsuna confirms quietly.

“This is your problem,” Hibari insists. “ _Your_ problem. Not mine.”

“I haven’t asked you to take care of it,” Tsuna points out, just for the record. Hibari sneers at him and raises a threatening tonfa, which would be more impressive if he weren’t slumped against the wall in exhaustion. “But I see your point,” Tsuna goes on quickly. “Kusakabe-san says you did something…?”

Hibari tucks the tonfa away and waves a dismissive hand. “We didn’t accomplish anything.”

Not quite the royal we; it’s the _we_ that means ‘Suzuki Adelheid and I.’ Which at least tells Tsuna where in the world Suzuki is. She’s often in the same place as Hibari, but by no means always. He’s not sure whether it’s more or less worrying when they’re together, but it is nice to know.

Kusakabe doesn’t rate a _we_. Kusakabe is understood.

“Suzuki is still in Italy?”

Hibari shrugs, indifferent.

It doesn’t matter in any immediate way, but Tsuna does like to keep track of Shimon family members when he can. Ah, well.

“Is Kusakabe-san still in Italy?”

“He’s finding out who was responsible. I told him it’s a waste of time; they’re all dead now.”

_I tried to stop him_ , Tsuna thinks, and sighs. All dead, meaning everyone who might have been responsible, plus a dozen others Hibari hadn’t liked the look of. “If they’re all dead, then…”

“No,” Hibari interrupts. “This has been going on for years. We fixed one problem, but it doesn’t mean anything. Someone else will pick up where they left off.”

_Fixed_. Haha, yes. “Tell me where,” Tsuna says, “and we’ll take care of it.”

Hibari sneers again. “Every other town south of Rome. You’re dreaming.”

* * *

_“The life of a boss is short; the power of a clan, between vendettas, arrests, killings, and life sentences, cannot last for long. To flood an area with toxic waste and circle one’s city with poisonous mountain ranges is a problem only for someone with a sense of social responsibility and a long-term concept of power. In the here and now of business, there are no negatives, only a high profit margin.”_

* * *

Tsuna is alone.

There’s something about being alone in the dark that breaks everyone back to their childhood fears, and Tsuna’s childhood fears were something special. He feels swallowed by the space; tiny, insignificant, fragile. The idea of sleep is terrifying, and even breathing feels dangerous; pulling the darkness into his lungs, letting it change him. Twist him.

He brushes shoulders with death every day, but that’s with his family standing behind him, reminding him of his reasons. It’s different at night, when he’s closer to the dead than he is to his family. The family is down the hall, but the dead are in the dark of his room, whispering _why, why, why_.

He doesn’t know. Right now, he really doesn’t know. Why?

But then, why not? Why not, when it’s just a matter of time? He’ll be joining them soon enough, and then no one will know who died first. No one will remember or care, not once they’ve all been swallowed by the dark.

Tsuna’s options are three: to stare into the shadows at his ghosts, to hide in the bathroom with all the lights on, or to just give up on everything and scream until Gokudera and Yamamoto come running.

None of his options appeal to him.

He could call up Giotto, but he’s called up Giotto every night this week, and he doesn’t have anything more to say that isn’t pointless panicking. Which means he’d be calling up a dead man in order to cry on his shoulder. About other dead people.

That’s really not fair to Giotto. Tsuna doesn’t want his distant successors calling him back from the dead so they can cry on his shoulder, does he?

Actually, thinking about it, he wouldn’t mind at all. Giotto doesn’t seem to mind, either. That’s not the point, though. It’s still, it’s, it’s inconsiderate.

On the other hand, it’s dark and he’s choking and he’s _alone_ —

There’s a knock at the door, and Tsuna jumps to answer it.

After a day like today, after a year like this year, it’s going to be Hibari. It doesn’t really matter who it is, God knows Tsuna never turns anyone away no matter what they want from him ( _please don’t leave me on my own_ ), but tonight, it’ll be Hibari. Which is good, because Tsuna’s in a Hibari kind of mood. He opens the door.

“Tsuna,” Hibari says quietly.

Tsuna grins at him, almost hysterical with relief, and steps backward, making room. “Let’s go,” he whispers.

* * *

Hibari’s gone in the morning, which isn’t surprising. But even the ones who stay or who only come to talk never mention their midnight visits outside the doors of Tsuna’s rooms. It seems…strange. So strange that Tsuna sometimes wonders if everything that happens in his rooms at night is just a dream.  
  
Not as idle a worry as it might be, considering Mukuro lives down the hall.  
  
If it is an illusion, Tsuna wonders what it says about Mukuro, that he shows Tsuna a parade of broken dreams. But if it’s not an illusion, then Tsuna has to wonder what all of this says about him.  
  
Fear of learning who he should be worrying about is what keeps _him_ from talking about it. It also keeps him from trying to see the reality past any possible illusions, even though Hibari did, uncharacteristically, take the time to teach him how.  
  
He stretches and feels various aches that don’t prove anything. Illusions feel just like the real thing as long as you believe in them.  
  
* * *  
  
 _“Your monthly payments fund clan operations, but they also earn you economic protection with the banks, punctual deliveries, and respect for your sales representatives. Extortion as an imposed acquisition of services.”_  
  
* * *  
  
Another morning, another meeting. Bianchi, Basil, and Hibari have, between them, managed to compile what they think is a complete map of all the waste dumping in Campania, Basilicata, and Puglia. They’re doing Calabria next, and plan to give Gokudera a map of the entire south in another month.  
  
A glaring lack of toxic waste in Chiavarone territory, Tsuna notices, pleased. Favors, indeed.  
  
The Vongola have not been so lucky. And Tsuna let this happen.  
  
Toxic waste disposal is sometimes as blatant as dumping waste into abandoned quarries, but, based on what Basil and Bianchi have found, it more often isn’t. Thanks to the stakeholders (bright young college-educated things who’ve memorized the EU’s List of Wastes), it’s usually well hidden. Mixed into cement. Diluted just enough with non-toxic trash. Turned into fertilizer and sold.  
  
“Looks like another trip to Italy soon,” Tsuna says softly, bracing himself for the opposition. “Next month, I think.”  
  
Yamamoto and Gokudera both go into high alert, and Tsuna bites his lip. “Why, Tenth?” Gokudera asks, trying to hide his panic.  
  
“Hibari-san’s looking for responsible bosses in Basilicata. It isn’t as badly off as the rest of the south, so we thought it’d be easiest to start there. I’d like to talk to those bosses, and I ought to check in with our allies, anyway. We owe Dino a visit, and I should talk to Nico. I should talk to a lot of people.”  
  
“Most bosses don’t talk to anybody but their immediate family,” Gokudera argues hopelessly. They’ve had this discussion a hundred times before. “Nobody knows what they look like, Tenth. It’s better that way.”  
  
Tsuna smiles, and Gokudera sighs and rubs his face, more or less resigned. “Hibari’s in Italy?” he asks shortly, reaching for cigarettes. It makes him unhappy not to know where the whole family is, and Hibari is constantly thwarting him.  
  
“He left two days ago for Matera.” Tsuna’s been missing him ever since, which is officially the most ridiculous thing he’s done this year.  
  
“This isn’t a great time for _you_ to be in Italy, Tsuna,” Yamamoto puts in. Gokudera gives him an approving nod, then turns, wide-eyed, to Tsuna, as if to say, _See? Even the baseball idiot thinks it’s a bad idea_.  
  
“Colonello and I could go instead,” Lal Mirch offers, which means she doesn’t want Tsuna in Italy either. Everyone’s ganging up on him. “We’ve done more interrogations than you brats have.”  
  
“Thank you,” Tsuna says carefully, not bothering to point out that ‘interrogation’ and ‘talk’ aren’t quite the same thing. “But sometimes people like to see my face. And I like to see them, especially if I’m trying to get them on our side.”  
  
Lal gives an annoyed shrug and turns away, as dismissive of Tsuna’s logic as ever.  
  
Tsuna doesn’t know what effect toxic waste would have on the Arcobaleno, and he isn’t going to find out the hard way. The curse is supposed to be broken, but there’s still something not quite right about the way they age; they can’t be called normal. And Uni can’t die for them again. He’s not sending any of them to Italy if he can keep them away.  
  
A few days after that meeting, as if Tsuna doesn’t have enough to worry about, he discovers that Gokudera has, for some reason, made printouts of the pictures and maps of waste dumps and pasted them around his office where he’s forced to stare at them all day long. Sometimes Gokudera appears to be doing everything he can to sabotage his own sanity.  
  
“It seems like this is personal for you,” Tsuna says one night, voicing a thought that’s been in the back of his mind since that first trip to Naples, years ago. “The trash. It bothers you more than anything else. More than the construction, the murder, the drugs.”  
  
He leaves it there, giving Gokudera the option of ignoring the implied question.  
  
They’re alone in what is half-jokingly referred to as the family room. Tsuna’s in a wing-backed chair with Hibari’s latest stack of non-reports (several of them offering to bite sundry Basilicata bosses to death and spare Tsuna the trouble, which is sort of touching). Gokudera is on the couch opposite, face lit by the glow of his laptop, buried in charts and graphs related to Tsuna-knows-not-what. He’s playing something from his apparently limitless collection of music with lyrics about disillusionment, madness, and overthrowing the government. This is not a terrible sign. It’s true that when he’s happy, everything he plays is instrumental. But when he’s devastated, he plays love songs.  
  
The room is a comfortable one, quiet, dark, and soft. No one but immediate family uses it; not even Dino knows it exists. It’s also generally understood that things said in this room will never be mentioned again once the conversation is over.  
  
The room was Bianchi’s idea, which is not as strange as it should be.  
  
“That’s true,” Gokudera agrees quietly, something just above a whisper. Out of place coming from the terrifying Right Hand of the Vongola. But none of them are quite what they pretend to be.  
  
A long pause, and then, “My mother died of leukemia.”  
  
Tsuna sits up. “I thought—”  
  
“That my father killed her?” Bizarrely, Gokudera smiles at him. “So did I. But it turns out she was dying anyway. They say she passed out while she was driving. Maybe she did. I had Giannini hack into her medical records—she really was dying, that much was true. She grew up in Qualiano. There’s no way to prove anything, but…”  
  
But Qualiano is one of Hibari’s worst toxic sites, just outside of Naples, bright red on all the maps.  
  
“Oh,” Tsuna breathes.  
  
“She could have moved somewhere else,” Gokudera says, sounding lost. “She had the money, I….” He pauses. “No. It was already too late.”  
  
Tsuna stands and crosses over to the couch, shuffling paperwork aside so he can sit. He meets Gokudera’s surprised eyes with an even gaze he likes to think Reborn would approve of. “What are you working on?” he asks.  
  
“What…what am I working on?”  
  
“Pretend I don’t know anything,” Tsuna says comfortably, slumping until they’re shoulder-to-shoulder. An old joke, if a private one. _Pretend_ , indeed.  
  
It works, though; it always does. Gokudera explains. For over an hour, he explains, desperately at first, but more calmly as he goes along, his body slowly relaxing until his shoulder’s actually comfortable to lean against. And if ninety percent of the explanation sails completely over Tsuna’s head, well. That’s hardly the point.  
  
* * *  
  
 _“Ethics are the limit of the loser, the protection of the defeated, the moral justification for those who haven’t managed to gamble everything and win it all.”_  
  
* * *  
  
Tsuna arrives in Italy, luckily or otherwise, just in time for Hibari to catch his first responsible Basilicata boss.  
  
Talking to the average fifteen-year-old capo can’t be described as a fun experience, and this one is threatening to be special. For one thing, he was dragged into Tsuna’s new office in Matera by the Varia, to whom Hibari had apparently passed him off. Specifically, Squalo dragged him in by the ear. Tsuna then had to kick all of the Varia out before the kid—the baby capo—would speak at all.  
  
Tsuna doesn’t want to do this. It’s not as if it’s worth the effort, bargaining with boy bosses. The talking dead. They turn over so quickly there’s hardly time to learn their names, let alone strike deals with them. Still, if you need something in their territories, it has to be done. Every few months, if necessary.  
  
What makes these meetings especially surreal is that Tsuna was, technically speaking, a baby capo himself. Like them, he fought his way to the head of a family before his voice had completely broken. Like them, he’d been attacked, gone into hiding, killed men, all before he was old enough to vote. He and the children who head their own families ought to have a lot of common ground.  
  
They have nothing in common.  
  
This one is Marco Di Chiara, called _’o pulcino_ , the baby chicken. Tsuna hopes the nickname doesn’t reflect as badly on the boy’s probable longevity as it seems to.  
  
“It’s my place,” Marco says. “My territory.”  
  
He’s talking about the nothing land between Matera and Grassano, a modest claim if ever there was one. Modest or not, though, the moment he started dumping toner in the fields, Hibari started considering it his territory instead. Tsuna almost always supports Hibari.  
  
“I disagree,” Tsuna tells Marco, but politely, because there’s nothing more useless than a baby capo who thinks you aren’t treating him with respect. “I hope we won’t have to argue about this.”  
  
Marco’s eyes wander past Tsuna. Judging from the quickly-suppressed flash of panic in his eyes, Tsuna imagines that Yamamoto is smiling and Gokudera is not. An unsettling sight, in the right circumstances. Though not as unsettling as when they switch.  
  
“Everybody knows you don’t care about territory!”  
  
False bravado. Defiance. Pride overcoming common sense. Tsuna’s seen it over and over again. He’s been guilty of it himself. “That’s right,” he says. “I’ve got no ambition. But the thing is, I can’t stand the idea of any of my family being hurt. Sometimes that makes me a little crazy, Marco. I will do _anything_ to keep them from being hurt.”  
  
The memory of Fuuta’s body overlapping with that of a scorched, bloody field. And the memory of a burned-out car: the worst thing Tsuna’s ever done. Not the act itself, but the fact that he did it without thinking. Murder as reflex.  
  
“Anything,” he repeats in a murmur, and notes that Marco's gone a little pale. He won’t survive a month as boss if his face keeps showing every emotion that way. Even Lambo is less transparent, and Lambo isn’t high profile. Ninety percent of being a boss is putting on a good show.  
  
 _All of us are terrified, Marco_.  
  
“You can’t just walk all over me,” says the baby chicken, trying for that good show. “I belong to the System!”  
  
So very proud of being a cog in the machine.  
  
“I’m not trying to walk all over you,” Tsuna points out. “I was hoping we could agree. I don’t want to take something away and give nothing back. A trade.”  
  
“What do you have that I want?” Marco sneers.  
  
Tsuna shudders to think how many things he has that someone like Marco might want. He’s tried to pick the most harmless of all of them. He turns to Shouichi and nods.  
  
It’s just a toy, Spanner says. Basic box weapon technology stripped of anything that might be useful, impossible to reverse engineer for someone unfamiliar with Mist flames. And everyone ought to be unfamiliar with Mist flames, at this point.  
  
It’s the _ought to_ , Tsuna thinks, that’s making it hard to breathe as he passes this impossible-to-reverse-engineer toy over to a baby capo. “Open it,” he says.  
  
Marco does. And he disappears, nothing to track him by but the sound of his gasp. Gokudera and Yamamoto both go tense, but Tsuna isn’t worried. They shouldn’t be, either. They all know that Chrome is in the room, watching.  
  
“Close it when you’re ready,” Tsuna says.  
  
Marco reappears, eyes wide and face pale. “What do you want?”  
  
“All of your waste disposal contracts.”  
  
“You can _have_ them!”  
  
All for a toy. A toy.  
  
“He didn’t think that through,” Chrome says with quiet disapproval after Marco has left and Squalo’s wandered back in. “Didn’t he wonder why we want those contracts?”  
  
“He’s fifteen,” Tsuna points out.  
  
“And what else do you expect from the fucking southerners?” Squalo drawls, ignoring Gokudera’s glare. “They don’t believe the long-term _exists_. You’re a stupid asshole for thinking you can do anything with ‘em, Sawada. You should just let us burn Naples to the ground. That’d sort ‘em out.”  
  
At this point, Gokudera, with no thought to rings, boxes, or bombs, flies across the room and tackles Squalo. Chrome looks disappointed, but not surprised. Yamamoto laughs.  
  
Tsuna sighs and leans back in his chair, rubbing his eyes, and leaves them to it. A little property damage is worth it; they need this. A clean fight, once in a while, is good for lowering the tension. For morale, God help them. Even if they do feel compelled to have this fight _in his office_.  
  
It’s a shame Ryouhei isn’t here. He always likes the extreme meetings best.  
  
* * *  
  
 _“The children of bosses often fall into a sort of delirium of omnipotence, believing that entire cities and their inhabitants are at their disposal.”_  
  
* * *  
  
Gokudera drags Tsuna back to Namimori at the earliest possible opportunity. Tsuna doesn’t mind. He needs a little space to brood over what he’s learned.  
  
Burning Naples to the ground wouldn’t be a viable option even if Tsuna did have the stomach for it (which he doesn’t). It wouldn’t do any good, not even if they took out all the surrounding towns, too. No. It would only make things worse.  
  
The problem of the South. A catch phrase, so old it’s almost a joke. Tsuna does have a plan, though. He tries to tell himself that it isn’t, in its way, just as terrible as burning cities.  
  
The door crashes open and Tsuna has his gloves on before he’s registered who’s there.  
  
“What the fuck do you think you’re _doing_ , scum?”  
  
Ah. Xanxus. Tsuna sighs and considers taking the gloves off. Decides against it. Apparently Squalo managed to talk his boss into paying Tsuna a visit after all. That might have been nice to know before Xanxus showed up in his office, but Tsuna has no one to blame but himself. He’d told everyone to let Xanxus through without question if he actually showed up.  
  
Tsuna hasn’t seen him in person for, oh, at least three years. That’s partly because Xanxus hates the sight of him, but mainly because Xanxus is a wild thing, and Tsuna is a boss. Bosses have to live in cages if they don’t want to die young.  
  
Most of them die young anyway.  
  
“Answer me before I burn this piece of shit room to ash. The fuck are you _doing?_ ”  
  
This isn’t the first time Tsuna’s wondered how highly edited Squalo’s reports to Xanxus are.  
  
“I’m destroying the mafia.”  
  
“What? _What!?_ What the _fuck?_ ”  
  
“I hate the mafia. I’ve always hated it.”  
  
“You’re the fucking _Vongola boss_. And you hate the mafia.”  
  
“I hate the mafia.”  
  
Xanxus snarls out of pure bafflement. Tsuna’s sort of having fun. “And what’re we gonna do for a living, moron, if you swing this? Not that you are, because it’s fucking ridiculous. Biggest bunch of bullshit I ever—”  
  
“A lot of people are going to be really unhappy with us if I make this work, Xanxus, so I think the Varia will be busy for a long time. Until we’re all dead, probably. Don’t worry—we’ll be able to keep paying you.”  
  
“I don’t need you scum,” Xanxus insists.  
  
“We need you, though.” Tsuna tips his head to the side and waits for Xanxus to conclude that there’s really no way to take that as an insult.  
  
“What do you want?” Xanxus eventually asks with belligerent reluctance.  
  
“Antonio Iovine,” Tsuna says.  
  
Xanxus’s mouth drops open. “You want me to kill _’o ninno?_ ”  
  
“No, but I want you to kill the people closest to him. Anyone who might notice if he starts acting…funny. And then I’d like to see him.”  
  
“The fuck is _wrong_ with you!? The Casalesi’ll come after you, the _entire fucking System_ will come after you! Not that I give a shit about you trash, but they’re gonna come after _me_ first. And what good’ll it do, moron!?”  
  
Apparently Tsuna’s really been missing out, not having Xanxus around. Has he changed over the years? Surely Tsuna would have remembered if he’d always been this entertaining. “Five years ago, it might not have done any good,” Tsuna allows. “But Iovine’s been around a long time. One of the strengths of the System is that no one boss lasts long enough to become indispensable. Iovine is different.”  
  
Iovine is a Casalesi boss. Gokudera hates the Casalesi. Xanxus wouldn’t respect that as a reason, though, so Tsuna doesn’t mention it.  
  
“You think you can control him? You can’t control a guy like that!”  
  
Tsuna tries to imitate Kyoko’s patient smile. Xanxus snarls at him.  
  
“What the fuck ever, scum. It’s your funeral. You want Iovine? You can have him. I hope I’m there when he rips your heart out with his bare hands.”  
  
Exit Xanxus, in high temper. Tsuna’s going to have to come up with reasons to bring him to Japan more often.  
  
He’s right, of course. Tsuna won’t be able to control Iovine. But Mukuro will. Mukuro will enjoy it.  
  
Tsuna knows this is worse than ripping Iovine’s heart out, but it’s probably still the least horrible option. Controlling Iovine is a big first step to controlling the Camorra, or so Reborn would have him believe. And if they control the Camorra, then the Secondigliano clans won’t attack the Vongola. Iovine will be one sacrifice to prevent hundreds of deaths.  
  
This is the most practical solution.  
  
He’d prefer to turn Iovine over to Chrome. She’s more subtle, less cruel. But she’s already volunteered for another important job. It can’t be helped.  
  
Tsuna’s made his decision. There’s a certain bleak peace in that.  
  
* * *  
  
 _“Traffickers increasingly fill ship holds with waste, then simulate an accident, letting the ship sink. They make money twice: the insurance covers the accident and the waste is entombed in the deep.”_  
  
* * *  
  
Yamamoto comes back from Campania with a fresh scar on the wrong side of his chin.  
  
Gokudera spends most of the night sitting on Tsuna’s bed playing _Quanti Amori_ on loop, panicking over what misplaced scars might mean. Tsuna whispers comfort, tries to look extremely alive, points out how different this world is otherwise.  
  
And oh, it is different. No box weapons, no rings, and a completely different list of dead and wounded.  
  
Tsuna has watched his guardians bleed and burn and break for years, and ever since that first horrible time (Yamamoto, surgery, blood everywhere), he’s known it’s his fault. Not just because he’s the boss, not just because of the mafia he still hasn’t fixed or destroyed, but because he changed the future and the past. Because he messed with things he didn’t understand.  
  
All his life, he’s been messing with things he doesn’t understand, and sooner or later, he knows he’s going to _pay_. Gokudera is afraid that Yamamoto’s scar means Tsuna’s going to die, that a scar in the wrong place might turn a faked death into a real one. Tsuna doesn’t think that would be all bad.  
  
He doesn’t say that. Of course he doesn’t say it.  
  
“You would tell me,” Gokudera insists to Tsuna, to himself. “You wouldn’t sneak off and do something crazy like fake your own death without _telling_ me, not this time. Right?”  
  
Tsuna murmurs something wordless and soothing. He doesn’t know the answer to that question at all.  
  
Gokudera leaves at around four in the morning to go to his piano, to play until his fingers bleed. Tsuna lets him go.  
  
At eight o’clock the next morning, when Yamamoto and Gokudera walk into his office, Gokudera’s eyes are just as wild as they were the night before. He has big, dark circles to go with them, and his fingers are wrapped in bandages. So last night was no illusion.  
  
Tsuna nods to Yamamoto. Yamamoto nods back, looking as worried as he knows how, his hand tightening on Gokudera’s shoulder. Gokudera’s leaning into it a little; he must be about to fall down.  
  
“A late night,” Tsuna explains to Yamamoto. “We were talking about parallel worlds.”  
  
Yamamoto’s eyes close in understanding, his free hand briefly touching his new scar. “Never did figure those out,” he says.  
  
“Because you’re an idiot,” Gokudera retorts. “Let me go. Get away.” He makes a half-hearted escape attempt.  
  
“Haha, Shouichi tried to explain chaos theory to me once, too,” Yamamoto goes on, undeterred. “Crazy stuff. It’s like one little thing changes, and you’re back to not knowing anything. Right?”  
  
Gokudera stops trying to squirm out of Yamamoto’s grip. Tsuna holds his breath.  
  
“There’s more to it than that,” Gokudera says after a moment.  
  
“Is there? Haha, I guess I didn’t understand. He said it was like the weather—like you get one little unexpected thing, and the whole pattern changes, maybe a lot, maybe hardly at all. And nobody can tell what’s gonna happen.”  
  
Gokudera turns that over for an almost unbearably long time.  
  
“You _would_ be the type to think ignorance is bliss, wouldn’t you?” he mutters at last, scowling and crossing his arms, but leaning his hip comfortably against Tsuna’s desk. “Moron.”  
  
Tsuna and Yamamoto exchange smiles.  
  
Gokudera’s phone rings. He fishes it out and irritably flips it open. “What?” he snaps.  
  
Normally, Gokudera is disappointingly blank on the phone. It’s hard to tell whether it’s even good news or bad news, watching him. This time, though, Gokudera’s eyes fly wide, and instead of his usual wordless disapproving sounds, he says things like, “Already!?” and “No shit!”  
  
He eventually closes the phone and grins at Tsuna and Yamamoto’s incredulous faces. “That was Bel,” he says. “The Varia have Iovine.”  
  
* * *  
  
 _“The System at least grants the illusion that commitment will be recognized, that it’s possible to make a career.”_  
  
* * *  
  
“Sawada Tsunayoshi,” Mukuro says with amused tolerance. “I know you’re not offering me control of one of the strongest bosses in Campania out of philanthropy. What do you want?”  
  
“I have a request.” And just like that, Tsuna upsets the equilibrium they’ve maintained for years.  
  
Tsuna helped Chrome and Ken and Chikusa free Mukuro. He gave them a home and protection. In exchange for that, Mukuro hasn’t turned on the Vongola. He’s even done small, quiet favors for the family, now and again.  
  
It’s a little like keeping a venomous pet snake, in that it’s a bit much to expect that the snake will not only not attack you, but also do tricks.  
  
Still, Tsuna reasons, he’ll never know if he doesn’t try. And people do survive snake bites. Sometimes. Depending on the snake.  
  
“Still so naïve,” Mukuro murmurs. “Charming, really. After all you’ve seen. And _done_.”  
  
Wandering around in people’s dreams, Tsuna feels, is a really dirty kind of cheating.  
  
“Only a little naïve,” he says evenly. “Right now, there’s no advantage for you in taking over my body or fighting me. I’m already doing exactly what you want me to do, and I’m giving you Iovine. It would be a waste of effort.”  
  
Mukuro tips his head to the side and studies Tsuna with mismatched eyes. Once upon a time, it would have made Tsuna uncomfortable. Happily, he’s been utterly terrified for most of his life and can’t muster the energy anymore.  
  
“Until we disagree, then,” Mukuro says eventually with a quirky smile. “Boss.”  
  
Tsuna nods. More of a concession than he’d expected. “You could be a lot of help in the south.”  
  
“Yes, the clans.” Mukuro smiles. “I’ll make them a nightmare.”  
  
Tsuna thinks they feed on nightmares.  
  
Mukuro is supposed to be able to remember his past lives. In view of that, Tsuna wonders how it is that he seems not to have learned anything from them. Unless developing the most twisted sense of humor known to man counts as “learning.”  
  
“They’re already afraid,” Tsuna tells him. “They’ve been afraid all along. Making them more afraid isn’t going to change them, it’s just going to push them into being even more the way they are. I think.”  
  
He tries to judge whether this is having any impact at all. Mukuro is still smiling, which means less than nothing.  
  
“Make them a dream,” Tsuna says.  
  
Mukuro throws his head back and laughs until he can’t breathe.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s a question of possibility. Of choices and the lack of them. When there are already far too few choices, it doesn’t help to eliminate any. Not even the terrible ones.  
  
They need to create more choices. Which is easier said than done, of course. Creating jobs isn’t easy, especially not when you have to do everything in secret, and changing tradition is even harder. Tradition really favors the north, when it comes to industrial development. But Tsuna thinks they’re starting to make progress.  
  
It’s a combination of things. Hiring people at unusually good wages for Vongola construction jobs. Seizing immigrants the moment they enter the country and finding them work before they get sucked down into the clans. Making stakeholding a more dangerous and therefore less attractive profession for young college grads.  
  
Mukuro’s Iovine is doing his best to bankrupt the clans with unprecedented generosity toward the public, while simultaneously kicking off endless infighting among the bosses. Mukuro is enjoying himself more than seems quite fair.  
  
The Vongola are buying up waste disposal contracts with Gokudera-induced fervor while Hibari investigates and Ryouhei wanders around Campania with a Geiger counter and _extreme persistence_. (Ryouhei is apparently beyond popular with the local kids.)  
  
Hana is patenting and Haru is marketing Spanner’s inventions at fever-pitch efficiency, while simultaneously trying to bribe northern companies to move south. They say the Vongola are already teetering on the brink of going into the red. Tsuna’s not worried; he knows they’ll find a way. He’s wise enough not to share this thought with them, though.  
  
Tsuna keeps a collection of photographs of various Italian politicians, all of them pushing policies the Vongola want pushed. In every one of those pictures, just visible on the edge of the crowd, is a dark-haired woman in huge, face-concealing sunglasses. Chrome volunteered for the duty; Reborn, Iemitsu, Bianchi, Kyoko, and Shouichi volunteered to be her advisors. And Hibari’s appointed himself her bodyguard. Tsuna’s not sure Chrome realizes that.  
  
Gokudera estimates that in another decade they’ll have rendered themselves obsolete, at which point Haru hopes to have enough legitimate businesses up and running to keep all of the Vongola allies fed, if not exactly wealthy. Gokudera says this is going to work because it’s the first time the whole country’s moved in the same direction. It doesn’t seem to bother him that it’s moving in the same direction because of mind control.  
  
Bianchi says it will only work if their one direction is actually the right one. She says Italian history is a study in the Law of Unintended Consequences. She says they’ll be lucky if they haven’t made everything worse in ten years, assuming that any of them are still alive at that point.  
  
Reborn says Giotto would be proud. Tsuna hopes it’s true. He hopes that someday he’ll have the courage to ask.  
  
Mukuro calls it Tsunayoshi’s Renaissance.  
  
* * *  
  
 _“Hello?”  
“Hello.”  
“The war’s over, now what are we supposed to do?”  
“Don’t worry, there’ll be another one.”_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reference notes for _What We Fought For_

**Reference Notes**

 

[Regional Map of Italy](http://www.paradoxplace.com/Perspectives/Maps/Images/Italy/Regional%20Map%20of%20Italy.jpg)

[Map of Naples and the surrounding area](http://maps.google.it/maps?hl=it&q=campania+mappa&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Campania&gl=it&ei=4GFXTKzkNorCsAPd5ojaAg&ved=0CB4Q8gEwAA&ll=40.912994,14.27124&spn=0.259451,0.44014&z=11)

*

Relevant books:  
[Gomorrah](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003R4ZGL4/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0374165270&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0AAYRWX6PS40G90TKZD8) by Roberto Saviano  
[Machiavelli’s Children](http://www.amazon.com/Machiavellis-Children-Leaders-Their-Legacies/dp/0801489822/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280860553&sr=1-5) by Richard J. Samuels  
[Christ Stopped at Eboli](http://www.amazon.com/Christ-Stopped-At-Eboli-ebook/dp/B004TGKJKC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1355380891&sr=8-3&keywords=christ+stopped+at+eboli) by Carlo Levi  
[The Dark Heart of Italy](http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Heart-Italy-Tobias-Jones/dp/0865477248/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280860822&sr=1-1) by Tobias Jones

*

Cosimo Di Lauro, in addition to [being hot](http://www.liquida.it/cosimo-di-lauro/bestof/news/?id=21772192), was apparently the instigator of the decentralization of power among the Camorra that has led to them being so disturbingly uncrushable. He’s in jail now, but you never saw a man being led to prison with so much style. Or maybe indifference is the word I’m looking for…why is this [on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7s6oouU30)? Good job, Cosimino.

Cosimo and his father Paulo were the leaders of the Di Lauro clan during the 2004 Secondigliano War.

*

That fashion industry thing? If you substitute _Camorra_ for _Vongola_ , I did not make any of that up.

*

The 2008 waste crisis. [Here](http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=nw20080109155132644C221895&click_id=143&set_id=1) is a good article about the lead-up. In late 2007, waste disposal workers went on strike, refusing to pick up any trash (as I recall, their argument was that the landfills were overfull and randomly toxic and they didn’t want to die, which seems reasonable.) The government responded by doing…nothing?

And this was not a new problem. Naples’ waste disposal system was declared an emergency situation in 1994, and that may have been before the mafia discovered what a goldmine waste ‘disposal’ was. (Or maybe not. Organized crime is often quicker on the uptake than government. Oh hi, Japan.) By 2004, _The Lancet Oncology_ had named the area east of Naples the “triangle of death” because of all of its cancer-causing pollutants ([article](http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/18/2141833.htm)). 2008 was just when trash ended up piled several feet deep on the streets of Naples and no one could pretend it away.

Then-Prime Minister Romano Prodi failed to do anything except irritate the hell out of all of Campania and cause a few protests verging on riots. He eventually resigned amidst total political chaos.

…Is it time for more Silvio Berlusconi? _It is always_ time for more Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi made visible progress! During summer 2008, landfills were opened, incinerators were built (and if they were burning toxic waste and releasing toxic gas, well, it couldn’t be helped), and lots of trash was certainly shipped off somewhere. This was all organized by Berlusconi’s appointed waste commissioner, Guido Bertolaso (who is now apparently under investigation for illegal waste trafficking. It is interesting that just about everyone who was working for Bertolaso has been arrested, and yet he himself has not been arrested. One wonders.)

And then Berlusconi did declare, “È finita l'emergenza rifiuti.” _The waste crisis is over_.

HA HA, yeaaaaah. Mission accomplished. Forza Italia! È finita l'emergenza rifiuti. Well, the waste crisis was partially shipped to Germany, anyway (possibly to Hamburg, possibly to Großpösna in east Germany, disturbingly I have seen both and question whether anyone actually knows), under the shady auspices of, among other people, some minion of Bertolaso’s called Lorenzo Miracle (who has subsequently been arrested for evil or criminal incompetence or both, along with some 25 other people) ([Article](http://flarenetwork.org/report/analyses/article/how_the_mafia_helped_send_italys_trash_to_germany.htm)). So thanks for that, Berlusconi. Anyway, the trash may be mostly out of Naples, but it’s apparently still all over the place in the outlying towns/suburbs. But who cares, right? Tourists don’t go there much, so no one has to know except the poor bastards who live there. That awkward interlude with the [toxic mozzarella](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italys-toxic-waste-crisis-the-mafia-ndash-and-the-scandal-of-europes-mozzarella-799289.html)? It’s a thing of the past.

So finita after all! [Except not](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8257912.stm). That was September 2009, work of the ’Ndrangheta, one presumes. God, I love it. If people had read that book Saviano risked his life to write back in 2006, THIS WOULDN’T BE A SURPRISE.

*headdesk*

*

Dante Passarelli was a businessman who rather abruptly made a lot of money—seemingly through legitimate means. The problem is not how he made more money from his initial capital. The problem is where he got the initial capital.

Passarelli’s hometown was Casal di Principe—where the _really_ scary bastards come from. “You can become a Camorrista, but you’re born a Casalese.” Basically, it is difficult for people to believe that you are not somehow involved with the mafia if you’re from Casal di Principe, which is why Casalesi who aren’t mafiosi make a habit of lying about where they’re from.

There was a judicial investigation. Evidence was gathered against Passarelli, more and more of his assets were confiscated by the state, it was all looking very bad for him, and then suddenly he…mysteriously died. Mysteriously. He fell to his death from a height. I’M SURE IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.

According to Roberto Saviano, Passarelli was guilty beyond question, and was killed just then so that his assets would return to his family (his family being more in reach of the Camorra than the state, see). Passarelli’s family loudly disagrees and is suing Saviano for libel, but good luck with that, guys. Last I heard, civil trials in Italy take eight freaking years.

*

_Quanti Amori_ is a 2004 album by Gigi D’Alessio. D’Alessio was born in Naples, and he began his musical career working for the Camorra, so he has that in common with, um, pretty much every other musician from Naples. (See [Neomelodic](http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/apr/14/scene-and-heard-neomelodics) [music](http://www.utne.com/Arts/Neomelodic-Minstrels-for-the-Mob.aspx)). The difference between D’Alessio and most other Neapolitan musicians is that he’s so famous now that the Camorra can’t touch him—they don’t like to kill public figures because that makes a splash and attracts attention, do not want. He _escaped_ , which makes him rare like a unicorn.

He’s taken advantage of his safety from the Camorra to say bad things about them at every opportunity. In any interview with Gigi D’Alessio, for sure there will be a “by the way, I fucking hate the Camorra” statement. Apparently he used to do like 15 performances a day on pain of death. “Sing at my nephew’s baptism or I’ll cut your throat,” that kind of thing. You can see how he got so bitter.

I picture Gokudera listening to Gigi D’Alessio in the spirit of self-flagellation.

*

Antonio Iovine is, how shall we say, a very very scary man. As aforementioned, Casalesi have a terrifying reputation in general, and Iovine is a Casalesi clan boss. He’s called _’o ninno_ because…well, explanations vary, but according to Saviano, it’s because he became a clan boss when he was still a kid. Unlike most other boy bosses, he’s survived to his 40s and isn’t even in jail (well, he’s on the run, but still). His brother, Giuseppe, was with the police until they fired him for mafia connections (heh), but firing him doesn’t seem to have accomplished much. (Amusing(?) [Guardian article](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/29/italy.drugstrade).) Iovine is making a fortune off of trash and construction, he laughs in the face of the law, he’s been known to rent out property to NATO (oops). Some homicidal maniacs have all the luck.


End file.
